VacationSelector

Belfast or London?

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

Your match

Belfast
48
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

London
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration 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 compact trip where the bars and restaurants sit close to the centre and open country starts quickly, with nearly a fifth of the surrounding land protected.

Choose London if you want museums, walkable sights, a much wider range of places to eat and a night out on a different scale, plus warmer summer days that reach 24°C.

Scoreboard

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

BelfastLondon
Beaches & swimming. Belfast leads by 48 points.48
BelfastLondon
Score480
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1047
Coast distance1 km43 km
Water distance1 km—
Places to eat. London leads by 32 points.32
BelfastLondon
Score5688
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4323,317
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3140
Museums & heritage. London leads by 43 points.43
BelfastLondon
Score2972
Museums within 10 km18148
Museums within 2 km of centre649
Share of museums within 2 km %3333
Unesco sites within 50 km14
Nightlife. London leads by 47 points.47
BelfastLondon
Score4895
Drinking venues within 4 km5505,327
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre3482,443
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6346
Nightclubs within 4 km29312
Nature & day trips. Belfast leads by 13 points.13
BelfastLondon
Score5340
Protected land share 50 km %1916
Landscape blanket share 50 km %1314
Land share of disc %6597
Park area within 2 km68 hectares84 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 27 points.27
BelfastLondon
Score4875
Tourist attractions within 2 km1685
Park area within 2 km68 hectares84 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km23
Sights concentration. London leads by 47 points.47
BelfastLondon
Score4289
Notable places within 2 km43649
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Belfast and London are level on 54.
BelfastLondon
Score5454
Price level global84.984.9
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. London leads by 12 points.12
BelfastLondon
Score5163
Monthly daytime high6.9 °C to 19 °C8.2 °C to 23.8 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 89 mm38 mm to 67 mm
Dry months01
0255075100

Where they differ

Belfast's advantage is what lies outside it: a slightly larger share of protected land around the city, 19% against 16%, and coastline within reach, though the sea reaches only 14°C at its warmest, in September.

London has many times as many places to drink and as many nightclubs, though only about half sit near the centre, where in Belfast most do. It also has many times as many museums, restaurants near the centre and notable places within walking distance, and 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Belfast's 1.

Where they are alike

Both are mild rather than warm: July is the warmest month in each, January the coolest, and neither gets a hot month. Sunshine stays under 1600 hours a year in both, and rain falls in every month rather than in one season.

Day trips are close too. Similar shares of the surrounding land are protected, 19% and 16%, and both have park space near the centre, so getting out of the city works from either.

Which traveller are you?

A traveller there for museums and heritage should pick London: many times as many museums, 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Belfast's 1, and most of the notable sights close enough to walk between.

Families are better served in London too, with many times as many attractions near the centre, more park space close in, and 3 theme parks within reach against Belfast's 2.

Anyone whose trip is mostly outside the city should choose Belfast: more of the surrounding land is protected, and the coast is within reach, warmest for swimming in September, though the water stays cool all year.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value comparison between these two cities carries no information. It rests on a national price level that is identical for both by construction, and no daily cost figure exists for either, so nothing here tells you which trip costs more.

Large counts also flatter London in ways a visit may not. Its drinking and nightlife are spread across a very large city, with only about half near the centre, while Belfast's are concentrated in walking range. Beach counts near either city come without warm water: neither has a month of sea at 21°C or more, and Belfast's tops out at 14°C.

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
London
8
9
12
15
18
22
24
23
20
16
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Belfast
9
8
8
8
9
11
12
13
14
14
12
11
London
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Belfast
74
62
60
56
55
65
74
86
67
89
87
85
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Daylight, hours per day
Belfast
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
London
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
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
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). London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Belfast is at its best from May to July, when highs sit at 15-19°C and rainfall is at its lowest for the year, 55-74mm. The sea peaks in September at 14°C. Late autumn is the wettest stretch, near 89mm.

London holds its warmth longer, with June to August highs of 22-24°C and rain of 46-53mm. Its driest months fall in spring, when rainfall drops to 38mm, so a city-walking trip works well outside summer too.

Getting there

Flying fromBelfastLondon
PalmaPMI
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
2 h 10 m
€79-116
LGW · 40 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
MalagaAGP
3 h 0 m
€135-197
BFS · 20 km
2 h 35 m
€119-292
1 stop
LGW · 40 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
2 h 20 m
€66-100
LGW · 40 km
FaroFAO
3 h 0 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
ArrecifeACE
4 h 5 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
AntalyaAYT
4 h 40 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
4 h 5 m
€144-189
LGW · 40 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 40 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
3 h 20 m
€128-183
1 stop
LGW · 40 km
CancunCUN
9 h 30 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 25 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
10 h 15 m
no fares
LHR · 23 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 2026-10, 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

MeasureBelfastLondon
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
Elevation3 m4 m
Main airportGeorge Best Belfast City Airport (BHD)4 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureBelfastLondon
City population345,0068,799,728
People per km²3,0005,598
Museums within 10 km8215
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km14
Distinct cuisines in the centre44116
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone–

Where else could you go?

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