VacationSelector

Bath or Edinburgh?

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

Your match

Bath
40
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather with your weighting.

Edinburgh
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families 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 Bath if the trip is mostly about what lies outside the city: protected countryside on the doorstep, a theme park within reach, and summer days a little warmer, up to 21°C.

Choose Edinburgh if you want the city itself to carry the days, with far more restaurants, bars and walkable sights near the centre, more for children, and the sea 3km away rather than 29km.

Scoreboard

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

BathEdinburgh
Beaches & swimming. Edinburgh leads by 47 points.47
BathEdinburgh
Score855
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km120
Coast distance29 km3 km
Water distance29 km3 km
Places to eat. Edinburgh leads by 24 points.24
BathEdinburgh
Score4670
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2451,023
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2635
Museums & heritage. Edinburgh leads by 10 points.10
BathEdinburgh
Score4757
Museums within 10 km2030
Museums within 2 km of centre1422
Share of museums within 2 km %7073
Unesco sites within 50 km23
Nightlife. Edinburgh leads by 28 points.28
BathEdinburgh
Score3664
Drinking venues within 4 km3201,193
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre240884
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7574
Nightclubs within 4 km1165
Nature & day trips. Bath leads by 9 points.9
BathEdinburgh
Score4435
Protected land share 50 km %282
Landscape blanket share 50 km %271
Land share of disc %9285
Park area within 2 km45 hectares166 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 32 points.32
BathEdinburgh
Score4072
Tourist attractions within 2 km1487
Park area within 2 km45 hectares166 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Edinburgh leads by 28 points.28
BathEdinburgh
Score3260
Notable places within 2 km25126
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bath and Edinburgh are level on 54.
BathEdinburgh
Score5454
Price level global84.984.9
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Bath leads by 4 points.4
BathEdinburgh
Score5551
Monthly daytime high6.8 °C to 21.4 °C6.6 °C to 18.8 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm43 mm to 80 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Bath is the better base for getting out of town: 28% of the land around it is protected against 2% around Edinburgh, and it has 1 theme park within reach where Edinburgh has none.

Edinburgh puts the sea 3km from the centre rather than 29km, with 20 beaches nearby. Its centre holds many times as many notable places within walking distance, about three times as many places to drink and many more nightclubs, plus far more restaurants, more attractions aimed at children and about three times as much park space.

Where they are alike

Weather is where the two are most alike. Both sit at 7°C in January and neither gets far past 21°C at the height of summer. Neither has a month at 40mm of rain or less, so waterproofs earn their place in either case.

Beyond that, both keep heritage within easy reach: each has UNESCO-listed places inside day-trip range and museums in the centre, with countryside or parkland close enough to fill an afternoon.

Which traveller are you?

Families are better served in Edinburgh: many more attractions near the centre, about three times as much park space, and beaches with the sea 3km out. Bath's counter is 1 theme park within reach.

Walkers and day-trippers should pick Bath, where 28% of the surrounding land is protected against 2% around Edinburgh, and summer afternoons run to 21°C, which makes a full day outdoors more comfortable.

Anyone travelling for eating and evenings out wants Edinburgh: many times as many restaurants near the centre, a somewhat wider range of kitchens, about three times as many places to drink and many more nightclubs.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figure here is a national price level, so it is identical for these two by construction and tells you nothing about which trip costs more. No daily budget exists for either city in this data, so no cost comparison between them is possible at all, and spending should be planned from your own research.

Edinburgh's beach advantage is about access rather than bathing: the sea there peaks at 14°C, while Bath's warmer 18°C water sits 29km from the centre. Neither city gives you the swimming season that a long list of beaches might suggest.

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
Bath
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
21
18
14
10
7
Edinburgh
7
7
9
12
14
17
19
19
17
13
9
7
Sea temperature, °C
Bath
8
7
7
9
12
15
18
18
17
15
12
9
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Rainfall, mm
Bath
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Daylight, hours per day
Bath
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Bath
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Edinburgh
2
3
4
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bath: 1991-2020 normals, Lyneham (29.2 km from centre). Edinburgh: 1991-2020 normals, Edinburgh Airport (10 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bath is at its best from June to August, when highs reach 19-21°C and rain sits at 56-66mm. Autumn turns wet, with October at 87mm, and the winter months stay damp, so the summer window is the one to aim for.

Edinburgh is the drier pick in spring, with April near 43mm, and it stays drier through winter, 62mm in January against Bath's 77mm. Its summer is cooler, topping out at 19°C, and no drier, so spring trades warmth for fewer wet days.

Getting there

Flying fromBathEdinburgh
PalmaPMI
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
KerkyraCFU
3 h 15 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
Puerto del RosarioFUE
3 h 50 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
4 h 25 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 0 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
4 h 30 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 35 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
AntalyaAYT
4 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
4 h 35 m
€195-238
2 stops
EDI · 11 km
Las PalmasLPA
4 h 0 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
4 h 30 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 132 km
6 h 50 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
CancunCUN
9 h 55 m
no fares
BHX · 126 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
GLA · 78 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

MeasureBathEdinburgh
Official languageEnglishEnglish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112 or 999
Elevation132 m47 m
Main airportBristol Airport (BRS)25 km from centre116 non-stop destinationsEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureBathEdinburgh
City population94,092488,050
People per km²3,2451,884
Museums within 10 km1732
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km23
Distinct cuisines in the centre3878
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bath or Edinburgh 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). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

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.