VacationSelector

Bath or Glasgow?

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

Glasgow
✓ Best match
48
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife 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 you want daylight and open country: it runs warmer through the year, up to 21°C in July, it is drier in every month, and more of the land around it is protected.

Choose Glasgow if the evenings decide it: many more places to eat and drink, far more nightclubs, denser sightseeing on foot, and the sea 3km from the centre rather than a drive away.

Scoreboard

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

BathGlasgow
Beaches & swimming. Glasgow leads by 28 points.28
BathGlasgow
Score836
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km13
Coast distance29 km3 km
Water distance29 km3 km
Places to eat. Glasgow leads by 17 points.17
BathGlasgow
Score4663
Restaurants within 2 km of centre245740
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2629
Museums & heritage. Bath leads by 2 points.2
BathGlasgow
Score4745
Museums within 10 km2032
Museums within 2 km of centre1413
Share of museums within 2 km %7041
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Glasgow leads by 27 points.27
BathGlasgow
Score3663
Drinking venues within 4 km3201,078
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre240654
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7561
Nightclubs within 4 km1173
Nature & day trips. Bath leads by 6 points.6
BathGlasgow
Score4438
Protected land share 50 km %2816
Landscape blanket share 50 km %2712
Land share of disc %9291
Park area within 2 km45 hectares56 hectares
Good for families. Glasgow leads by 1 points.1
BathGlasgow
Score4041
Tourist attractions within 2 km1413
Park area within 2 km45 hectares56 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Glasgow leads by 21 points.21
BathGlasgow
Score3253
Notable places within 2 km2580
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bath and Glasgow are level on 54.
BathGlasgow
Score5454
Price level global84.984.9
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Bath leads by 12 points.12
BathGlasgow
Score5543
Monthly daytime high6.8 °C to 21.4 °C6.6 °C to 18.9 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm102 mm to 207 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Bath runs warmer, 7-21°C across the year against Glasgow's 7-19°C, and is drier in every month, which matters if you plan to walk. Its surroundings are better protected too: 28% of the land around it against 16% around Glasgow.

Glasgow answers with volume: about three times as many restaurants near the centre, three times as many places to drink, many times as many nightclubs, and about three times as many notable places within walking distance. The sea is 3km from its centre against 29km from Bath's.

Where they are alike

Families get much the same trip in either. Each has about as many tourist attractions near the centre as the other, each has 1 theme park within reach, and Glasgow adds a little more central park space.

Heritage is close too. Glasgow has more museums, Bath's sit tighter around the centre, and both have 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach. Both also put open countryside within a day's outing from the centre.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone planning nights out and long dinners should take Glasgow: about three times as many restaurants near the centre, three times as many places to drink, and many more nightclubs, most of them walkable from one another.

Walkers and day-trippers are better served by Bath: 28% of the surrounding land is protected, July highs reach 21°C, and rainfall stays lower month by month, so a full day outdoors is a safer bet.

Families will find little between them. Both have 1 theme park within reach and a similar spread of attractions near the centre; Glasgow adds central park space, while Bath's museums sit closer together for short legs.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value comparison between these two carries no information. It rests on a national price level that is identical for both by construction, and this dataset holds no daily budget for either city, so no cost comparison between Bath and Glasgow is possible in any direction. Price your own trip and judge it separately.

Glasgow's coastal edge is thinner than the numbers suggest. The sea is 3km from the centre, but it tops out at 15°C even at its warmest, so proximity is not swimming. And Bath's relative dryness is only relative: no month there drops to 40mm or less.

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
Glasgow
7
7
9
12
15
18
19
19
16
13
9
7
Sea temperature, °C
Bath
8
7
7
9
12
15
18
18
17
15
12
9
Glasgow
8
7
7
8
10
13
15
15
14
12
11
9
Rainfall, mm
Bath
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Glasgow
207
170
147
102
103
111
129
145
132
185
190
205
Daylight, hours per day
Bath
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Glasgow
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
Glasgow
1
2
3
4
5
4
4
4
3
2
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bath: 1991-2020 normals, Lyneham (29.2 km from centre). Glasgow: 1991-2020 normals, Glasgow Airport (11.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bath is the better bet from June to September: highs of 18-21°C with rainfall near 54-66mm, which is the drier half of its year and the best stretch for walking between sights. October and November are its wettest months, so avoid those.

Glasgow peaks from May to August at 15-19°C, but rain never really steps aside. Even its driest months, April and May, run near 102mm, and December is above 200mm. Its summer is wetter than Bath's wettest month, so pack accordingly.

Getting there

Flying fromBathGlasgow
MalagaAGP
2 h 35 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 25 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 0 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
4 h 30 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
AntalyaAYT
4 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
4 h 40 m
€171-239
1 stop
GLA · 11 km
Las PalmasLPA
4 h 0 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
4 h 30 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
ArrecifeACE
3 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 10 m
no fares
CWL · 68 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
CancunCUN
9 h 55 m
no fares
BHX · 126 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
GLA · 11 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 2026-09 to 2026-09, 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

MeasureBathGlasgow
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 m21 m
Main airportBristol Airport (BRS)25 km from centre116 non-stop destinationsGlasgow Airport (GLA)11 km from centre95 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureBathGlasgow
City population94,092626,410
People per km²3,245190
Museums within 10 km1729
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre3854
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 Glasgow 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.