VacationSelector

Athens or York?

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 nightlife with your weighting.

York
41
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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.

AthensYork
Beaches & swimming. Athens leads by 48 points.48
AthensYork
Score480
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km142
Coast distance6 km50 km
Water distance6 km
Places to eat. Athens leads by 15 points.15
AthensYork
Score6954
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,431361
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2531
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 27 points.27
AthensYork
Score7346
Museums within 10 km12218
Museums within 2 km of centre7816
Share of museums within 2 km %6489
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Athens leads by 38 points.38
AthensYork
Score8143
Drinking venues within 4 km2,718450
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354353
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5078
Nightclubs within 4 km13614
Nature & day trips. Athens leads by 12 points.12
AthensYork
Score4533
Protected land share 50 km %517
Landscape blanket share 50 km %016
Land share of disc %5095
Park area within 2 km128 hectares42 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 28 points.28
AthensYork
Score7143
Tourist attractions within 2 km6813
Park area within 2 km128 hectares42 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 36 points.36
AthensYork
Score7539
Notable places within 2 km29137
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 20 points.20
AthensYork
Score7454
Price level global55.884.9
Daily budget€125
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 18 points.18
AthensYork
Score7456
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C6.7 °C to 20.9 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm39 mm to 66 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
York
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
20
18
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
York
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
York
53
44
39
48
43
61
56
65
58
66
62
60
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
York
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
York
2
3
4
5
6
5
6
5
4
3
2
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). York: 1991-2020 normals, Leeming (47.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensYork
HeraklionHER
1 h 0 m
€84-111
ATH · 20 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
55 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
ChaniaCHQ
1 h 0 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
ThessalonikiSKG
1 h 0 m
€103-128
ATH · 20 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
ThiraJTR
55 m
€94-103
ATH · 20 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
LarnacaLCA
1 h 45 m
€63-80
ATH · 20 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€97-139
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
10 h 15 m
€634
ATH · 20 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 35 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
MAN · 104 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

MeasureAthensYork
Official languageGreekEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation74 m25 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsLeeds Bradford Airport (LBA)39 km from centre73 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensYork
City population643,452208,400
People per km²16,499766
Museums within 10 km8824
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre8254
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 York 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.