VacationSelector

Bordeaux or Brussels?

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

Your match

Bordeaux
49
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather with your weighting.

Brussels
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage 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.

BordeauxBrussels
Beaches & swimming. Bordeaux and Brussels are level on 0.
BordeauxBrussels
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km40
Coast distance18 km56 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Brussels leads by 13 points.13
BordeauxBrussels
Score6881
Restaurants within 2 km of centre9751,779
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3244
Museums & heritage. Brussels leads by 25 points.25
BordeauxBrussels
Score5580
Museums within 10 km35120
Museums within 2 km of centre1759
Share of museums within 2 km %4949
Unesco sites within 50 km410
Nightlife. Brussels leads by 20 points.20
BordeauxBrussels
Score4868
Drinking venues within 4 km5461,414
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre427862
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7861
Nightclubs within 4 km3284
Nature & day trips. Bordeaux leads by 20 points.20
BordeauxBrussels
Score5131
Protected land share 50 km %356
Landscape blanket share 50 km %351
Land share of disc %85100
Park area within 2 km43 hectares65 hectares
Good for families. Brussels leads by 11 points.11
BordeauxBrussels
Score4556
Tourist attractions within 2 km2128
Park area within 2 km43 hectares65 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Brussels leads by 28 points.28
BordeauxBrussels
Score4573
Notable places within 2 km51254
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bordeaux leads by 2 points.2
BordeauxBrussels
Score6260
Price level global73.776.2
Daily budget€160€180
Year-round weather. Bordeaux leads by 11 points.11
BordeauxBrussels
Score6857
Monthly daytime high10.5 °C to 27.6 °C6.1 °C to 23.3 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 114 mm47 mm to 90 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
Bordeaux
11
12
16
18
22
25
27
28
24
20
14
11
Brussels
6
7
11
15
18
21
23
23
20
15
10
6
Rainfall, mm
Bordeaux
87
67
63
76
71
71
47
57
81
83
114
107
Brussels
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
Daylight, hours per day
Bordeaux
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Brussels
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Bordeaux
3
4
6
6
7
8
8
8
7
5
3
3
Brussels
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bordeaux: 1991-2020 normals, Bordeaux / Merignac (9.5 km from centre). Brussels: 1991-2020 normals, Uccle (5.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBordeauxBrussels
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 15 m
€114-148
BOD · 11 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 30 m
€46-73
BOD · 11 km
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
MadridMAD
1 h 20 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 11 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
€77-107
BOD · 11 km
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 11 km
GenevaGVA
1 h 20 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
LyonLYS
1 h 15 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
MarseilleMRS
1 h 15 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
CRL · 43 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 50 m
€98-125
BOD · 11 km
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 11 km
NiceNCE
1 h 25 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
7 h 10 m
€421
BRU · 11 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 2026-09 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

MeasureBordeauxBrussels
Official languageFrenchFrench, German, Dutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation1 m70 m
Main airportBordeaux–Mérignac Airport (BOD)11 km from centre94 non-stop destinationsBrussels Airport (BRU)11 km from centre191 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBordeauxBrussels
City population267,991195,546
People per km²5,4255,908
Museums within 10 km18105
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km410
Distinct cuisines in the centre81109

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bordeaux or Brussels 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. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.