Belgrade or Dubrovnik?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on nightlife and nature & day trips with your weighting.
Wins on 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.
The verdict
Choose Belgrade if the trip is about eating out, going out late and walking between sights, with parks and protected land within reach for the days in between.
Choose Dubrovnik if swimming is the point: 43 beaches nearby and a sea above 21°C for five months, in a small town where the evening is quieter and the centre smaller to walk.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Dubrovnik leads by 77 points.77
| Belgrade | Dubrovnik | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 77 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 5 |
| Beaches 10 km | 9 | 43 |
| Coast distance | 292 km | 0 km |
| Water distance | — | 0 km |
Places to eat. Belgrade leads by 25 points.25
| Belgrade | Dubrovnik | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 63 | 38 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 776 | 206 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 29 | 18 |
Museums & heritage. Belgrade leads by 4 points.4
| Belgrade | Dubrovnik | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 53 | 49 |
| Museums within 10 km | 67 | 18 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 47 | 17 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 70 | 94 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 0 | 3 |
Nightlife. Belgrade leads by 45 points.45
| Belgrade | Dubrovnik | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 65 | 20 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 1,163 | 128 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 841 | 110 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 72 | 86 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 130 | 13 |
Nature & day trips. Belgrade leads by 33 points.33
| Belgrade | Dubrovnik | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 38 | 5 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 6 | 4 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 2 | 4 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 51 |
| Park area within 2 km | 147 hectares | 6 hectares |
Good for families. Belgrade leads by 30 points.30
| Belgrade | Dubrovnik | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 51 | 21 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 14 | 12 |
| Park area within 2 km | 147 hectares | 6 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 1 | 1 |
Sights concentration. Belgrade leads by 24 points.24
| Belgrade | Dubrovnik | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 68 | 44 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 190 | 48 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Belgrade leads by 5 points.5
| Belgrade | Dubrovnik | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 85 | 80 |
| Price level global | 41.7 | 48.5 |
| Daily budget | €99 | €138 |
Year-round weather. Belgrade and Dubrovnik are level on 65.
| Belgrade | Dubrovnik | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 65 | 65 |
| Monthly daytime high | 5 °C to 29.7 °C | 11 °C to 29.1 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 44 mm to 95 mm | 54 mm to 198 mm |
| Dry months | 0 | 0 |
Where they differ
Belgrade has many times as many bars and clubs as Dubrovnik, most of them near the centre, so a night out needs little planning. It also has far more park space close to the centre, and 6% of the land around it is protected against 4% around Dubrovnik.
Dubrovnik is the swimming trip: 43 beaches nearby against Belgrade's 9, and sea at 21°C or more for five months, reaching 26°C at the peak. Belgrade has no such swimming season at all.
Where they are alike
Neither has an even climate: Belgrade runs 5-30°C across the year, Dubrovnik 11-29°C, so both have a clear summer and a cool off-season, and neither gets a month at 40mm of rain or less.
Both also carry a heritage visit, in different forms: Belgrade has about three times as many museums, while Dubrovnik has 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach where Belgrade has none. The national budget estimates behind the two sit in the same broad band.
Which traveller are you?
Swimmers and beach-first travellers: Dubrovnik, with 43 beaches nearby and sea above 21°C for five months. Belgrade has no equivalent, and its outdoor strength is park space rather than water.
Anyone who plans a trip around dinner and what follows it: Belgrade, with about three times as many restaurants near the centre, a much wider range of kitchens, and many more bars and clubs, most of them walkable.
Families: Belgrade, on far more park space near the centre and somewhat more attractions within walking range. Both have 1 theme park within reach, so the difference lies in what fills the ordinary afternoons.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €99 and €138, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of either city. A capital and a town of 41,600 people can each sit far from their country's average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so neither tells you what your own trip will cost.
Dubrovnik's swimming season and its driest, warmest weather land in the same narrow window, so beaches, sights and the small centre fill at once. The months without that pressure are the wet ones: autumn and early winter rainfall runs several times the July figure.
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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Belgrade: 1991-2020 normals, Beograd (2.1 km from centre). Dubrovnik: 1999-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Dubrovnik / Cilipi (15.3 km from centre).
Belgrade is at its best from May to September, when highs run 24-30°C. June is the wettest of that run at 95mm and the rest of the summer is drier; the spring and autumn shoulders stay mild enough for walking.
Dubrovnik is a July and August trip: highs near 29°C, the year's driest months at 54-62mm, and sea at 25-26°C. Rain builds sharply from October, reaching 198mm by the year's end, so the autumn shoulder is wet rather than simply cooler.
Getting there
| Flying from | Belgrade | Dubrovnik |
|---|---|---|
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 2 h 40 m €103-154 BEG · 12 km | 2 h 40 m no fares DBV · 16 km |
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 1 h 35 m €185-297 BEG · 12 km | 1 h 40 m €255-303 1 stop DBV · 16 km |
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 2 h 20 m €87-103 BEG · 12 km | 2 h 20 m €63-108 DBV · 16 km |
| ZagrebZAG | 1 h 5 m no fares BEG · 12 km | 1 h 10 m no fares DBV · 16 km |
| ViennaVIE | 1 h 15 m €138-153 BEG · 12 km | 1 h 25 m €66-134 DBV · 16 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 1 h 55 m €177-224 1 stop BEG · 12 km | 2 h 0 m €181-222 1 stop DBV · 16 km |
| ZurichZRH | 1 h 45 m €203-237 BEG · 12 km | 1 h 45 m no fares DBV · 16 km |
| RomeFCO, CIA | 1 h 30 m €127-186 BEG · 12 km | 1 h 15 m €55-130 DBV · 16 km |
| Tel Aviv YafoTLV | 2 h 55 m no fares BEG · 12 km | 2 h 50 m €274-389 TIV · 57 km |
| New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA | 9 h 10 m €703-796 1 stop BEG · 12 km | 9 h 10 m no fares DBV · 16 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
| Measure | Belgrade | Dubrovnik |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | Serbian | Croatian |
| Currency | Serbian Dinar (RSD) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CF230 V, 50 Hz | CF230 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer |
| Emergency number | Police 92/192, ambulance 94/194, fire 93/193 | 112 |
| Elevation | 117 m | 10 m |
| Main airport | Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport (BEG)12 km from centre123 non-stop destinations | Dubrovnik Ruđer Bošković Airport (DBV)16 km from centre74 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 11 days | 14 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Belgrade | Dubrovnik |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 1,197,714 | 41,562 |
| People per km² | 3,327 | – |
| Museums within 10 km | 65 | 7 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 0 | 3 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 62 | 32 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | – | 5 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Belgrade or Dubrovnik somewhere new.