VacationSelector

Belfast or Galway?

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 nightlife with your weighting.

Galway
39
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and 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 city to walk around: the wider range of kitchens, far more places to drink, more museums, and attractions and theme parks that keep children occupied on a wet day.

Choose Galway if the trip is mostly coast and countryside. It has 13 beaches nearby, marginally warmer days and sea that reaches 16°C in August, and a much quieter evening.

Scoreboard

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

BelfastGalway
Beaches & swimming. Galway leads by 3 points.3
BelfastGalway
Score4851
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1013
Coast distance1 km1 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. Belfast leads by 19 points.19
BelfastGalway
Score5637
Restaurants within 2 km of centre432173
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3120
Museums & heritage. Belfast leads by 9 points.9
BelfastGalway
Score2920
Museums within 10 km185
Museums within 2 km of centre65
Share of museums within 2 km %33100
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Belfast leads by 22 points.22
BelfastGalway
Score4826
Drinking venues within 4 km550185
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre348153
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6383
Nightclubs within 4 km298
Nature & day trips. Galway leads by 2 points.2
BelfastGalway
Score5355
Protected land share 50 km %19—
Landscape blanket share 50 km %130
Land share of disc %6585
Park area within 2 km68 hectares65 hectares
Good for families. Belfast leads by 23 points.23
BelfastGalway
Score4825
Tourist attractions within 2 km165
Park area within 2 km68 hectares65 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Belfast leads by 20 points.20
BelfastGalway
Score4222
Notable places within 2 km4314
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Galway leads by 3 points.3
BelfastGalway
Score5457
Price level global84.980.2
Daily budget—€187
Year-round weather. Galway leads by 3 points.3
BelfastGalway
Score5154
Monthly daytime high6.9 °C to 19 °C8.9 °C to 19.6 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 89 mm63 mm to 113 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Belfast is the stronger city for evenings out, with roughly three times as many bars and nightclubs as Galway, most of them near the centre. It also has about three times as many tourist attractions close in and 2 theme parks within reach where Galway has none, and around three times as many notable places within walking distance.

Galway answers with the coast and the weather: 13 beaches nearby against Belfast's 10, sea 1km from either centre, highs of 9-20°C against 7-19°C and sea reaching 16°C.

Where they are alike

Green space is where the two are closest: both have a similar amount of park land near the centre, and both work as a base for days out into the countryside rather than keeping you within the city.

They are also close on the coast, on weather and on value. The sea is 1km from either centre, but neither gets a month with sea at 21°C or more. Neither has a month at 40mm of rain or less either.

Which traveller are you?

A couple after food and late evenings should take Belfast. It has roughly twice as many restaurants near the centre as Galway and a much wider range of kitchens, plus far more bars and clubs, nearly all walkable.

Families are better served in Belfast too: about three times as many tourist attractions close to the centre, more museums, 2 theme parks within reach, and 1 UNESCO-listed place on a day trip.

Walkers and swimmers should pick Galway: 13 beaches nearby, the sea 1km from the centre and up to 16°C in late summer, similar park space and far less noise at night.

What the numbers don't tell you

There is no price comparison to be had here. The data gives a daily budget for Galway, about €187, and none at all for Belfast, so nothing can be said about which is the cheaper trip; the value ranking behind these two rests on a different measure that both cities do have.

The beach figures also flatter both. The sea is 1km from either centre, but neither city sees a month with sea at 21°C or more, and Galway's slightly warmer days come with the heavier rain, so a beach-led trip depends on luck with the weather.

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
Galway
9
10
11
14
16
19
20
19
18
14
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Belfast
9
8
8
8
9
11
12
13
14
14
12
11
Galway
9
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
15
14
12
10
Rainfall, mm
Belfast
74
62
60
56
55
65
74
86
67
89
87
85
Galway
100
87
76
63
63
72
76
89
77
101
104
113
Daylight, hours per day
Belfast
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
Galway
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
Galway
2
2
4
5
6
5
4
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). Galway: 1991-2020 normals, Shannon Airport (64.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Belfast peaks in midsummer, with highs of 18-19°C, and it is the drier of the two in nearly every month; its lightest is 55mm in May. The sea is warmest at 14°C in September, by which point rainfall is climbing again.

Galway's best stretch is the same one, a degree warmer at 19-20°C, with sea to 16°C in July and August. The trade is rain: it is markedly wetter from autumn into winter, at 101-113mm a month.

Getting there

Flying fromBelfastGalway
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 15 m
€72-142
BHD · 4 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 0 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
KrakowKRK
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
EdinburghEDI
55 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
FaroFAO
3 h 0 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
ArrecifeACE
4 h 5 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
MalagaAGP
3 h 0 m
€135-197
BFS · 20 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 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

MeasureBelfastGalway
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 m25 m
Main airportGeorge Best Belfast City Airport (BHD)4 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsShannon Airport (SNN)64 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBelfastGalway
City population345,00683,456
People per km²3,0001,563
Museums within 10 km84
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre4425
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 Galway 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.