VacationSelector

Athens or Bucharest?

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

Your match

Athens
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Bucharest
55
match

Wins on value for money with your weighting.

What matters to you?

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

Scoreboard

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

AthensBucharest
Beaches & swimming. Athens leads by 48 points.48
AthensBucharest
Score480
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km143
Coast distance6 km198 km
Water distance6 km
Places to eat. Athens leads by 2 points.2
AthensBucharest
Score6967
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,431667
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2541
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 24 points.24
AthensBucharest
Score7349
Museums within 10 km12273
Museums within 2 km of centre7840
Share of museums within 2 km %6455
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Athens leads by 19 points.19
AthensBucharest
Score8162
Drinking venues within 4 km2,7181,017
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354541
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5053
Nightclubs within 4 km13680
Nature & day trips. Athens leads by 9 points.9
AthensBucharest
Score4536
Protected land share 50 km %54
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %50100
Park area within 2 km128 hectares133 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 3 points.3
AthensBucharest
Score7168
Tourist attractions within 2 km6845
Park area within 2 km128 hectares133 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 14 points.14
AthensBucharest
Score7561
Notable places within 2 km291130
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bucharest leads by 11 points.11
AthensBucharest
Score7485
Price level global55.840.9
Daily budget€125€99
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 11 points.11
AthensBucharest
Score7463
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C2.8 °C to 30.5 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm33 mm to 82 mm
Dry months71
0255075100

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
Athens
13
14
17
21
27
32
34
35
30
24
19
15
Bucharest
3
6
12
19
24
28
30
31
25
18
11
4
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Bucharest
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Bucharest
40
33
42
49
71
82
68
48
62
59
44
47
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Bucharest
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Bucharest
2
4
5
6
8
9
10
9
7
5
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Athens: 1991-2020 normals, Athens / Athenai / Pláka (2.2 km from centre). Bucharest: 1991-2020 normals, Bucuresti / Imh (10 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensBucharest
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
3 h 10 m
€72-175
OTP · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
1 h 10 m
€121-131
OTP · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
2 h 50 m
€118-127
OTP · 18 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€71-91
ATH · 20 km
2 h 15 m
€45-61
OTP · 18 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€97-139
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 0 m
€79-110
OTP · 18 km
ThessalonikiSKG
1 h 0 m
€103-128
ATH · 20 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
OTP · 18 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 5 m
€125-147
ATH · 20 km
2 h 30 m
€144-199
OTP · 18 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 10 m
€83-197
ATH · 20 km
1 h 40 m
€92-150
OTP · 18 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€202-223
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 45 m
€198-212
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
9 h 40 m
€669-837
1 stop
OTP · 18 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

MeasureAthensBucharest
Official languageGreekRomanian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Romanian Leu (RON)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation74 m70 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsBucharest Henri Coandă International Airport (OTP)18 km from centre123 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days17 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensBucharest
City population643,4521,716,961
People per km²16,4997,597
Museums within 10 km8841
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre8268
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Athens or Bucharest 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.