VacationSelector

Barcelona or Cardiff?

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

Your match

Barcelona
✓ Best match
71
match

Wins on nightlife and good for families with your weighting.

Cardiff
48
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.

BarcelonaCardiff
Beaches & swimming. Barcelona leads by 19 points.19
BarcelonaCardiff
Score6546
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km208
Coast distance2 km2 km
Water distance2 km2 km
Places to eat. Barcelona leads by 30 points.30
BarcelonaCardiff
Score9060
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,786541
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4132
Museums & heritage. Barcelona leads by 29 points.29
BarcelonaCardiff
Score6839
Museums within 10 km10561
Museums within 2 km of centre496
Share of museums within 2 km %4710
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Barcelona leads by 34 points.34
BarcelonaCardiff
Score8248
Drinking venues within 4 km2,711536
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,641395
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6174
Nightclubs within 4 km24535
Nature & day trips. Barcelona and Cardiff are level on 50.
BarcelonaCardiff
Score5050
Protected land share 50 km %1018
Landscape blanket share 50 km %015
Land share of disc %5168
Park area within 2 km49 hectares88 hectares
Good for families. Barcelona leads by 33 points.33
BarcelonaCardiff
Score6532
Tourist attractions within 2 km604
Park area within 2 km49 hectares88 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Barcelona leads by 28 points.28
BarcelonaCardiff
Score7345
Notable places within 2 km25851
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Barcelona leads by 17 points.17
BarcelonaCardiff
Score7154
Price level global60.884.9
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Barcelona leads by 24 points.24
BarcelonaCardiff
Score7854
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 28.9 °C7.7 °C to 20.2 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 83 mm49 mm to 87 mm
Dry months50
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
Barcelona
14
14
16
19
22
26
28
29
26
22
18
15
Cardiff
8
8
10
13
16
18
20
20
18
14
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Barcelona
14
13
13
14
17
21
24
25
24
21
17
15
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Rainfall, mm
Barcelona
41
32
40
47
44
27
27
51
83
82
45
36
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Daylight, hours per day
Barcelona
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Barcelona
5
5
7
8
8
9
10
9
7
6
4
4
Cardiff
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Barcelona: 1991-2020 normals, Barcelona / Aeropuerto (14.4 km from centre). Cardiff: 1991-2020 normals, Cardiff-Wales Airport (14.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBarcelonaCardiff
PalmaPMI
55 m
€40-57
BCN · 13 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
€114-118
BCN · 13 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
IbizaIBZ
1 h 0 m
€44-54
BCN · 13 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€79-101
BCN · 13 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 30 m
€33-92
BCN · 13 km
1 h 55 m
€85-113
1 stop
BRS · 34 km
MenorcaMAH
55 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
Las PalmasLPA
3 h 15 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 10 m
€132-158
BCN · 13 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 20 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
8 h 15 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
CWL · 15 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

MeasureBarcelonaCardiff
Official languageSpanishEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation9 m41 m
Main airportJosep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN)13 km from centre229 non-stop destinationsCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureBarcelonaCardiff
City population1,731,649383,536
People per km²17,0942,734
Museums within 10 km959
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre12855
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Barcelona or Cardiff 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.