VacationSelector

Belfast or Paphos?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Belfast
48
match

Wins on nature & day trips and sights concentration with your weighting.

Paphos
46
match

Wins on year-round weather and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

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

BelfastPaphos
Beaches & swimming. Paphos leads by 31 points.31
BelfastPaphos
Score4879
Swim season months06
Beaches 10 km1027
Coast distance1 km1 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. Belfast leads by 12 points.12
BelfastPaphos
Score5644
Restaurants within 2 km of centre432251
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3122
Museums & heritage. Belfast leads by 7 points.7
BelfastPaphos
Score2922
Museums within 10 km188
Museums within 2 km of centre63
Share of museums within 2 km %3338
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Belfast leads by 18 points.18
BelfastPaphos
Score4830
Drinking venues within 4 km550224
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre348161
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6372
Nightclubs within 4 km2911
Nature & day trips. Belfast leads by 30 points.30
BelfastPaphos
Score5323
Protected land share 50 km %192
Landscape blanket share 50 km %130
Land share of disc %6533
Park area within 2 km68 hectares27 hectares
Good for families. Belfast leads by 6 points.6
BelfastPaphos
Score4842
Tourist attractions within 2 km1630
Park area within 2 km68 hectares27 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Belfast leads by 23 points.23
BelfastPaphos
Score4219
Notable places within 2 km4312
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Paphos leads by 16 points.16
BelfastPaphos
Score5470
Price level global84.961.4
Daily budget€129
Year-round weather. Paphos leads by 35 points.35
BelfastPaphos
Score5186
Monthly daytime high6.9 °C to 19 °C17 °C to 30.8 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 89 mm0 mm to 98 mm
Dry months08
0255075100

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
Paphos
17
17
19
21
25
28
30
31
29
27
23
19
Sea temperature, °C
Belfast
9
8
8
8
9
11
12
13
14
14
12
11
Paphos
17
17
17
18
21
24
27
28
27
25
22
19
Rainfall, mm
Belfast
74
62
60
56
55
65
74
86
67
89
87
85
Paphos
81
47
29
17
10
2
1
0
5
14
42
98
Daylight, hours per day
Belfast
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
Paphos
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Belfast
2
2
3
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
2
2
Paphos
No sunshine record

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). Paphos: 1991-2020 normals, Paphos Airport (8.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBelfastPaphos
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 15 m
€72-142
BHD · 4 km
4 h 25 m
€125-167
PFO · 8 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 0 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
EdinburghEDI
55 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
4 h 55 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
BirminghamBHX
1 h 5 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
BristolBRS
1 h 10 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
ThessalonikiSKG
3 h 45 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
1 h 55 m
€96-218
PFO · 8 km
KrakowKRK
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
3 h 0 m
€129-174
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
GlasgowGLA, PIK
50 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
5 h 0 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
NottinghamEMA
1 h 5 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 35 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
4 h 5 m
€253-340
1 stop
PFO · 8 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

MeasureBelfastPaphos
Official languageEnglishTurkish, Greek, Modern Greek
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzG240 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation3 m72 m
Main airportGeorge Best Belfast City Airport (BHD)4 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsPaphos International Airport (PFO)8 km from centre57 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days17 days

By the numbers

MeasureBelfastPaphos
City population345,00635,961
People per km²3,0001,987
Museums within 10 km84
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre4436
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone6 months

Where else could you go?

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