VacationSelector

Athens or Tirana?

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 museums & heritage and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Tirana
51
match

Wins on value for money and nature & day trips 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.

AthensTirana
Beaches & swimming. Athens leads by 31 points.31
AthensTirana
Score4817
Swim season months55
Beaches 10 km140
Coast distance6 km26 km
Water distance6 km26 km
Places to eat. Athens leads by 14 points.14
AthensTirana
Score6955
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,431572
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2522
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 48 points.48
AthensTirana
Score7325
Museums within 10 km12212
Museums within 2 km of centre788
Share of museums within 2 km %6467
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Athens leads by 23 points.23
AthensTirana
Score8158
Drinking venues within 4 km2,718945
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354683
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5072
Nightclubs within 4 km13629
Nature & day trips. Tirana leads by 4 points.4
AthensTirana
Score4549
Protected land share 50 km %511
Landscape blanket share 50 km %03
Land share of disc %5083
Park area within 2 km128 hectares147 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 19 points.19
AthensTirana
Score7152
Tourist attractions within 2 km6821
Park area within 2 km128 hectares147 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 22 points.22
AthensTirana
Score7553
Notable places within 2 km29183
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tirana leads by 10 points.10
AthensTirana
Score7484
Price level global55.842.6
Daily budget€125€76
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 7 points.7
AthensTirana
Score7467
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C11.6 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm43 mm to 172 mm
Dry months70
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
Tirana
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Tirana
15
14
14
16
19
23
24
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Tirana
143
117
116
103
84
66
43
55
78
114
172
148
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Tirana
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Tirana
4
4
5
6
9
10
12
11
9
7
4
3

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). Tirana: 1961-1990 normals, Tirana (3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensTirana
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 55 m
€62-138
TIA · 13 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
2 h 30 m
€73-102
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 5 m
€125-147
ATH · 20 km
2 h 40 m
€222-261
TIA · 13 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
1 h 35 m
€100-109
TIA · 13 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€71-91
ATH · 20 km
1 h 50 m
€33-74
TIA · 13 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
2 h 35 m
€73-144
ATH · 20 km
2 h 5 m
€68-80
TIA · 13 km
HeraklionHER
1 h 0 m
€84-111
ATH · 20 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
TIA · 13 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€97-139
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 25 m
€30-52
TIA · 13 km
KatowiceKTW
2 h 20 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 50 m
€73-87
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
10 h 15 m
€634
ATH · 20 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
TIA · 13 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

MeasureAthensTirana
Official languageGreekAlbanian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Lek (ALL)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation74 m110 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsTirana International Airport Mother Teresa (TIA)13 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensTirana
City population643,452389,323
People per km²16,4999,314
Museums within 10 km8811
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre8246
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Athens or Tirana 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. 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 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.