VacationSelector

Belfast or Cork?

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

Your match

Belfast
✓ Best match
48
match

Wins on good for families and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Cork
38
match

Wins on value for money 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 Belfast if you want a trip that works on foot: more to see close to the centre, a wider choice of places to eat and drink, beaches within easy reach and theme parks for children.

Choose Cork if the city is mostly a base for getting out of it, and if you want the sunnier year and the warmer sea, 16°C in late summer, with less packed into the centre.

Scoreboard

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

BelfastCork
Beaches & swimming. Belfast leads by 20 points.20
BelfastCork
Score4828
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km101
Coast distance1 km3 km
Water distance1 km3 km
Places to eat. Belfast leads by 6 points.6
BelfastCork
Score5650
Restaurants within 2 km of centre432224
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3135
Museums & heritage. Belfast leads by 6 points.6
BelfastCork
Score2923
Museums within 10 km1810
Museums within 2 km of centre68
Share of museums within 2 km %3380
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Belfast leads by 10 points.10
BelfastCork
Score4838
Drinking venues within 4 km550361
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre348292
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6381
Nightclubs within 4 km299
Nature & day trips. Belfast leads by 1 points.1
BelfastCork
Score5352
Protected land share 50 km %19—
Landscape blanket share 50 km %130
Land share of disc %6574
Park area within 2 km68 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Belfast leads by 21 points.21
BelfastCork
Score4827
Tourist attractions within 2 km167
Park area within 2 km68 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Belfast leads by 20 points.20
BelfastCork
Score4222
Notable places within 2 km4314
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cork leads by 3 points.3
BelfastCork
Score5457
Price level global84.980.2
Daily budget—€187
Year-round weather. Belfast leads by 2 points.2
BelfastCork
Score5149
Monthly daytime high6.9 °C to 19 °C8.3 °C to 18.6 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 89 mm78 mm to 140 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Belfast packs more into walking range: roughly three times as many notable places near the centre as Cork, and about twice as many tourist attractions, plus 2 theme parks within reach where Cork has none. It also offers a wider choice of restaurants and drinking spots, and 10 nearby beaches against one at Cork.

Cork answers with water and light: its sea reaches 16°C in late summer where Belfast tops out at 14°C, it gets more sunshine across the year, and its museums, fewer in number, sit tightly around the centre.

Where they are alike

Both are cities you leave easily. Green space sits near each centre, a little more of it in Belfast, and each has open country within day-trip range, so time splits between streets and outings.

The weather and the table are close as well. Highs run 7-19°C in Belfast and 8-19°C in Cork, July is the warmest month in both, and no month in either drops to 40mm of rain or less. The range of kitchens is similar.

Which traveller are you?

Families do better in Belfast. About twice as many attractions sit near the centre, 2 theme parks are within reach where Cork has none, and 10 beaches lie close by for days that need an easy destination.

Anyone travelling for food and nights out should also pick Belfast, which has a markedly larger stock of restaurants, bars and clubs near the centre, most of them walkable, while Cork's equivalent is smaller.

Swimmers and walkers can take Cork. The sea is 3km from the centre and reaches 16°C in late summer, warmer than Belfast's, and the parks and day-trip country around the two are much alike.

What the numbers don't tell you

No daily cost figure exists for Belfast in this data, so the two cannot be compared on price at all. The value axis rests on a different measure that both cities share, and it says nothing about what a day in Belfast costs. Budget for that separately.

The beach advantage is narrower than the counts suggest. Belfast's sea peaks at 14°C and Cork's at 16°C, and neither gets a month of sea at 21°C or more, so these are beaches for walking more than swimming. Rain qualifies the summer too: no month in either falls 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
Belfast
7
8
10
12
15
18
19
19
17
13
10
7
Cork
8
9
10
12
15
17
19
19
17
13
10
9
Sea temperature, °C
Belfast
9
8
8
8
9
11
12
13
14
14
12
11
Cork
10
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
14
12
11
Rainfall, mm
Belfast
74
62
60
56
55
65
74
86
67
89
87
85
Cork
132
100
92
85
78
88
86
98
91
140
125
134
Daylight, hours per day
Belfast
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
Cork
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Belfast
2
2
3
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
2
2
Cork
2
2
4
5
6
6
5
5
4
3
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Belfast: 1991-2020 normals, Belfast / Aldergrove Airport (19.4 km from centre). Cork: 1991-2020 normals, Cork Airport (5.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Belfast suits May to August, when highs run 15-19°C and spring is the driest part of its year at about 55mm a month. Autumn turns heavier, and by November the streets are wet more often than not.

Cork peaks in July and August at 19°C, and its sea reaches 16°C and holds there into September, so swimming is more plausible. Winter is the trade: 125-140mm a month from October to January, far wetter than Belfast over the same stretch.

Getting there

Flying fromBelfastCork
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 15 m
€72-142
BHD · 4 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 94 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 0 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 35 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
MalagaAGP
3 h 0 m
€135-197
BFS · 20 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
EdinburghEDI
55 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
FaroFAO
3 h 0 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
ArrecifeACE
4 h 5 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
3 h 40 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
KrakowKRK
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 94 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

MeasureBelfastCork
Official languageEnglishEnglish, Irish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation3 m0 m
Main airportGeorge Best Belfast City Airport (BHD)4 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsCork International Airport (ORK)7 km from centre46 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBelfastCork
City population345,006222,333
People per km²3,0005,961
Museums within 10 km85
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre4449
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Belfast or Cork 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.