VacationSelector

Belfast or Riga?

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 good for families and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Riga
✓ Best match
53
match

Wins on museums & heritage 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.

Scoreboard

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

BelfastRiga
Beaches & swimming. Belfast leads by 8 points.8
BelfastRiga
Score4840
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1057
Coast distance1 km12 km
Water distance1 km12 km
Places to eat. Riga leads by 3 points.3
BelfastRiga
Score5659
Restaurants within 2 km of centre432470
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3133
Museums & heritage. Riga leads by 32 points.32
BelfastRiga
Score2961
Museums within 10 km1869
Museums within 2 km of centre647
Share of museums within 2 km %3368
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Riga leads by 3 points.3
BelfastRiga
Score4851
Drinking venues within 4 km550584
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre348456
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6378
Nightclubs within 4 km2954
Nature & day trips. Belfast leads by 9 points.9
BelfastRiga
Score5344
Protected land share 50 km %1910
Landscape blanket share 50 km %130
Land share of disc %6573
Park area within 2 km68 hectares68 hectares
Good for families. Belfast leads by 13 points.13
BelfastRiga
Score4835
Tourist attractions within 2 km167
Park area within 2 km68 hectares68 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Riga leads by 20 points.20
BelfastRiga
Score4262
Notable places within 2 km43137
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Riga leads by 22 points.22
BelfastRiga
Score5476
Price level global84.953.7
Daily budget€132
Year-round weather. Riga leads by 1 points.1
BelfastRiga
Score5152
Monthly daytime high6.9 °C to 19 °C-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 89 mm33 mm to 87 mm
Dry months03
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
Riga
0
0
4
12
17
21
24
22
17
11
5
1
Sea temperature, °C
Belfast
9
8
8
8
9
11
12
13
14
14
12
11
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Rainfall, mm
Belfast
74
62
60
56
55
65
74
86
67
89
87
85
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Daylight, hours per day
Belfast
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Belfast
2
2
3
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
2
2
Riga
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). Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBelfastRiga
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 15 m
€72-142
BHD · 4 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
HelsinkiHEL
3 h 5 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 35 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 35 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
OsloOSL, TRF
2 h 10 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 0 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
TallinnTLL
3 h 0 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
EdinburghEDI
55 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 40 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
5 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 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

MeasureBelfastRiga
Official languageEnglishLatvian
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation3 m6 m
Main airportGeorge Best Belfast City Airport (BHD)4 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days

By the numbers

MeasureBelfastRiga
City population345,006588,911
People per km²3,000
Museums within 10 km812
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre4455
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 Riga 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.