VacationSelector

Belfast or York?

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

York
41
match

Wins on museums & heritage and year-round weather 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 the coast and open country within reach: 10 beaches nearby, more protected land around the city and more park space near the centre, plus a slightly wider choice of restaurants and late-night places.

Choose York if museums and heritage matter most, with 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach and a warmer, drier year behind them.

Scoreboard

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

BelfastYork
Beaches & swimming. Belfast leads by 48 points.48
BelfastYork
Score480
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km102
Coast distance1 km50 km
Water distance1 km—
Places to eat. Belfast leads by 2 points.2
BelfastYork
Score5654
Restaurants within 2 km of centre432361
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3131
Museums & heritage. York leads by 17 points.17
BelfastYork
Score2946
Museums within 10 km1818
Museums within 2 km of centre616
Share of museums within 2 km %3389
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Belfast leads by 5 points.5
BelfastYork
Score4843
Drinking venues within 4 km550450
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre348353
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6378
Nightclubs within 4 km2914
Nature & day trips. Belfast leads by 20 points.20
BelfastYork
Score5333
Protected land share 50 km %1917
Landscape blanket share 50 km %1316
Land share of disc %6595
Park area within 2 km68 hectares42 hectares
Good for families. Belfast leads by 5 points.5
BelfastYork
Score4843
Tourist attractions within 2 km1613
Park area within 2 km68 hectares42 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km23
Sights concentration. Belfast leads by 3 points.3
BelfastYork
Score4239
Notable places within 2 km4337
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Belfast and York are level on 54.
BelfastYork
Score5454
Price level global84.984.9
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. York leads by 5 points.5
BelfastYork
Score5156
Monthly daytime high6.9 °C to 19 °C6.7 °C to 20.9 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 89 mm39 mm to 66 mm
Dry months01
0255075100

Where they differ

Belfast is the one with a coastline: 10 beaches nearby against York's 2, and about twice as much park space near the centre. The countryside around it is a little more protected, 19% of the land against 17%, which widens the range of day trips.

York's strength is heritage. The two hold a similar number of museums, but York's sit more tightly around the centre, so more of it is walkable in a day, and it has 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Belfast's 1.

Where they are alike

Eating out is close to a wash. Belfast has somewhat more restaurants near the centre, but the range of kitchens is much the same, so neither limits what you can eat.

The two are also alike on how much sits within walking distance of the centre, and on nights out, where most bars and clubs are central in both. Family appeal is close too: Belfast leans on parks, York on its 3 theme parks within reach.

Which traveller are you?

Travelling with children: it is close, but Belfast has more park space near the centre and more attractions within walking reach, while York counts 3 theme parks within reach against Belfast's 2. Belfast for outdoor days.

Anyone travelling for museums and heritage should pick York: a similar number of museums, packed more tightly around the centre, and 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Belfast's 1.

If you want long evenings out and varied eating, Belfast has more places to drink, about twice as many nightclubs and somewhat more restaurants near the centre. In both, the drinking is concentrated centrally.

What the numbers don't tell you

The two carry the same value figure because it is a national price level, identical for both by construction, so it says nothing about which city costs more. No daily budget figure exists for either, so no cost comparison between them is possible here; check accommodation and eating-out prices yourself.

Belfast's coastal advantage needs reading carefully: 10 beaches nearby, but the sea peaks at 14°C in September and never reaches 21°C, so this is a coast for walking rather than swimming. York's theme parks and UNESCO-listed places sit within day-trip reach rather than in town, so each is a day out.

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
York
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
20
18
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Belfast
9
8
8
8
9
11
12
13
14
14
12
11
York
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Belfast
74
62
60
56
55
65
74
86
67
89
87
85
York
53
44
39
48
43
61
56
65
58
66
62
60
Daylight, hours per day
Belfast
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
York
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Belfast
2
2
3
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
2
2
York
2
3
4
5
6
5
6
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). York: 1991-2020 normals, Leeming (47.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Belfast is at its best from May to July, when highs reach 15-19°C and rainfall sits at its lowest for the year, 55-65mm. September is worth a look too, with the sea at its warmest, 14°C, before October turns wet at 89mm.

York is warmer and drier through the same stretch, with July highs of 21°C and spring rain of 39-48mm. Even its wettest month stays drier than anything Belfast gets, which matters if you plan to walk the city.

Getting there

Flying fromBelfastYork
PalmaPMI
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 15 m
€72-142
BHD · 4 km
55 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
MalagaAGP
3 h 0 m
€135-197
BFS · 20 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
ArrecifeACE
4 h 5 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
FaroFAO
3 h 0 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
7 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
AgadirAGA
3 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 25 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
CancunCUN
9 h 30 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
9 h 50 m
no fares
MAN · 104 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

MeasureBelfastYork
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 m25 m
Main airportGeorge Best Belfast City Airport (BHD)4 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsLeeds Bradford Airport (LBA)39 km from centre73 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureBelfastYork
City population345,006208,400
People per km²3,000766
Museums within 10 km824
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre4454
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 York 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.