VacationSelector

Antwerp or Bruges?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Antwerp
✓ Best match
51
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Bruges
44
match

Wins on good for families and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Antwerp if you want evenings out and a wide choice of places to eat: about three times as many restaurants and bars near the centre as Bruges, more museums, and about twice as many notable places within walking distance.

Choose Bruges if you are travelling with children or want a small, quiet base: roughly three times as many tourist attractions sit close to the centre.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

AntwerpBruges
Beaches & swimming. Bruges leads by 8 points.8
AntwerpBruges
Score08
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km11
Coast distance21 km14 km
Water distance—14 km
Places to eat. Antwerp leads by 18 points.18
AntwerpBruges
Score7557
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,164443
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4232
Museums & heritage. Antwerp leads by 12 points.12
AntwerpBruges
Score6957
Museums within 10 km4130
Museums within 2 km of centre2724
Share of museums within 2 km %6680
Unesco sites within 50 km93
Nightlife. Antwerp leads by 25 points.25
AntwerpBruges
Score5934
Drinking venues within 4 km866292
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre657233
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7680
Nightclubs within 4 km738
Nature & day trips. Antwerp leads by 8 points.8
AntwerpBruges
Score3426
Protected land share 50 km %72
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8065
Park area within 2 km53 hectares59 hectares
Good for families. Bruges leads by 14 points.14
AntwerpBruges
Score4660
Tourist attractions within 2 km1452
Park area within 2 km53 hectares59 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Antwerp leads by 14 points.14
AntwerpBruges
Score5440
Notable places within 2 km8840
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Antwerp and Bruges are level on 60.
AntwerpBruges
Score6060
Price level global76.276.2
Daily budget€180€180
Year-round weather. Antwerp leads by 2 points.2
AntwerpBruges
Score5856
Monthly daytime high6.5 °C to 23.2 °C6.4 °C to 22 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 mm35 mm to 79 mm
Dry months01
0255075100

Where they differ

Antwerp has about three times as many restaurants near the centre as Bruges, and a wider range of kitchens. It also has about three times as many places to drink and far more nightclubs. It has somewhat more museums, 9 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Bruges's 3, and about twice as many notable places within walking distance.

Bruges has about three times as many tourist attractions near the centre, which makes it the simpler city with children, though Antwerp has 3 theme parks within reach against Bruges's 1.

Where they are alike

Both share the same cool, damp maritime climate: daytime highs of 7-23°C in Antwerp and 6-22°C in Bruges, with rain falling in every month, so outdoor plans depend on the summer half of the year.

Each has one beach nearby and neither gets a month with the sea warm enough for comfortable swimming, so neither works as a seaside trip. Countryside is thin in both cases, and near the centre the two offer much the same park space.

Which traveller are you?

If you are going for dinners and evenings out, Antwerp: about three times as many restaurants and drinking places near the centre as Bruges, a wider spread of kitchens, and far more nightclubs, most of them walkable.

Travelling with children, Bruges: roughly three times as many tourist attractions close to the centre, all within a small area. Antwerp answers with more theme parks within reach, but those need a trip out.

For a quiet short break, Bruges: fewer late-night venues, more sunshine across the year, and a drier spring, with 35mm in April. Museum-minded visitors will find more to work through in Antwerp.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value comparison between these two cities carries no information: it is a national price level, identical for both by construction. The daily budget of €180 beside it is a single national estimate rather than a measurement of either place, so it tells you nothing about which of the two costs less.

Some figures reach beyond the city itself. Antwerp's UNESCO-listed sites and its theme parks lie within day-trip reach rather than in town, and its larger share of protected land describes the wider region; near the centre both have much the same park space. Summer rates best in both and is also their wettest stretch, so a strong month is not a dry one.

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Antwerp
7
8
11
15
19
21
23
23
20
15
10
7
Bruges
6
7
10
13
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Antwerp
No coastline within reach
Bruges
7
6
7
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Antwerp
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
Bruges
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Daylight, hours per day
Antwerp
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Bruges
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Antwerp
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1
Bruges
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Antwerp: 1991-2020 normals, Antwerpen / Deurne (5.2 km from centre). Bruges: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (37.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Antwerp runs slightly warmer and peaks at 23°C in midsummer, but that is also its wettest stretch, at 80-90mm. September is the better compromise, 20°C and 67mm.

Bruges is the drier choice in spring: April brings 35mm against Antwerp's 47mm, at 13°C, and it sees more sunshine across the year. In high summer it sits at 22°C with 74-79mm, marginally drier than Antwerp. Winter in either is dark and damp, with rain in every month and little reason to be outdoors.

Getting there

Flying fromAntwerpBruges
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 36 km
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 94 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 36 km
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 94 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 36 km
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 94 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 36 km
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 94 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 36 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 45 m
€93-156
BRU · 36 km
1 h 45 m
€93-156
BRU · 94 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 36 km
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 94 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 36 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 36 km
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 123 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureAntwerpBruges
Official languageFrench, German, DutchFrench, German, Dutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation7 m2 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)36 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsBrussels Airport (BRU)94 km from centre191 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureAntwerpBruges
City population529,247118,509
People per km²2,542840
Museums within 10 km3838
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km93
Distinct cuisines in the centre8051
Swim season, months above 21 °C–None

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Antwerp or Bruges somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.