VacationSelector

Belfast or Philadelphia?

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 value for money with your weighting.

Philadelphia
✓ Best match
51
match

Wins on museums & heritage and places to eat 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.

BelfastPhiladelphia
Beaches & swimming. Belfast leads by 48 points.48
BelfastPhiladelphia
Score480
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km101
Coast distance1 km13 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Philadelphia leads by 21 points.21
BelfastPhiladelphia
Score5677
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4321,714
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3135
Museums & heritage. Philadelphia leads by 31 points.31
BelfastPhiladelphia
Score2960
Museums within 10 km1889
Museums within 2 km of centre648
Share of museums within 2 km %3354
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Philadelphia leads by 11 points.11
BelfastPhiladelphia
Score4859
Drinking venues within 4 km550930
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre348575
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6362
Nightclubs within 4 km2941
Nature & day trips. Belfast leads by 4 points.4
BelfastPhiladelphia
Score5349
Protected land share 50 km %1914
Landscape blanket share 50 km %130
Land share of disc %6589
Park area within 2 km68 hectares75 hectares
Good for families. Philadelphia leads by 5 points.5
BelfastPhiladelphia
Score4853
Tourist attractions within 2 km1616
Park area within 2 km68 hectares75 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Philadelphia leads by 12 points.12
BelfastPhiladelphia
Score4254
Notable places within 2 km4388
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Belfast leads by 11 points.11
BelfastPhiladelphia
Score5443
Price level global84.9100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Philadelphia leads by 9 points.9
BelfastPhiladelphia
Score5160
Monthly daytime high6.9 °C to 19 °C5.2 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 89 mm69 mm to 112 mm
Dry months00
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
Philadelphia
5
7
12
18
24
28
31
30
26
20
13
8
Sea temperature, °C
Belfast
9
8
8
8
9
11
12
13
14
14
12
11
Philadelphia
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Belfast
74
62
60
56
55
65
74
86
67
89
87
85
Philadelphia
79
69
101
88
86
103
111
109
112
88
74
101
Daylight, hours per day
Belfast
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
Philadelphia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Belfast
2
2
3
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
2
2
Philadelphia
4
5
6
7
9
9
8
9
7
7
5
5

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). Philadelphia: 1991-2020 normals, Philadelphia International Airport (11.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBelfastPhiladelphia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 15 m
€72-142
BHD · 4 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
8 h 5 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 0 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
7 h 0 m
no fares
JFK · 140 km
EdinburghEDI
55 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
7 h 0 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
8 h 5 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
1 h 55 m
€60-108
PHL · 11 km
BostonBOS, PSM
6 h 20 m
€519-589
1 stop
DUB · 132 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
7 h 35 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
CancunCUN
9 h 30 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 25 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
13 h 35 m
no fares
JFK · 140 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 40 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
EWR · 117 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

MeasureBelfastPhiladelphia
Official languageEnglish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999911
Elevation3 m12 m
Main airportGeorge Best Belfast City Airport (BHD)4 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsPhiladelphia International Airport (PHL)11 km from centre128 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBelfastPhiladelphia
City population345,0061,603,797
People per km²3,0004,339
Museums within 10 km854
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre4475
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 Philadelphia 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.