VacationSelector

Bordeaux or Cardiff?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Bordeaux
49
match

Wins on museums & heritage and year-round weather with your weighting.

Cardiff
48
match

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.

Scoreboard

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

BordeauxCardiff
Beaches & swimming. Cardiff leads by 46 points.46
BordeauxCardiff
Score046
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km48
Coast distance18 km2 km
Water distance2 km
Places to eat. Bordeaux leads by 8 points.8
BordeauxCardiff
Score6860
Restaurants within 2 km of centre975541
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3232
Museums & heritage. Bordeaux leads by 16 points.16
BordeauxCardiff
Score5539
Museums within 10 km3561
Museums within 2 km of centre176
Share of museums within 2 km %4910
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Bordeaux and Cardiff are level on 48.
BordeauxCardiff
Score4848
Drinking venues within 4 km546536
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre427395
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7874
Nightclubs within 4 km3235
Nature & day trips. Bordeaux leads by 1 points.1
BordeauxCardiff
Score5150
Protected land share 50 km %3518
Landscape blanket share 50 km %3515
Land share of disc %8568
Park area within 2 km43 hectares88 hectares
Good for families. Bordeaux leads by 13 points.13
BordeauxCardiff
Score4532
Tourist attractions within 2 km214
Park area within 2 km43 hectares88 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Bordeaux and Cardiff are level on 45.
BordeauxCardiff
Score4545
Notable places within 2 km5151
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bordeaux leads by 8 points.8
BordeauxCardiff
Score6254
Price level global73.784.9
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Bordeaux leads by 14 points.14
BordeauxCardiff
Score6854
Monthly daytime high10.5 °C to 27.6 °C7.7 °C to 20.2 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 114 mm49 mm to 87 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
Cardiff
8
8
10
13
16
18
20
20
18
14
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Bordeaux
No coastline within reach
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Rainfall, mm
Bordeaux
87
67
63
76
71
71
47
57
81
83
114
107
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Daylight, hours per day
Bordeaux
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Bordeaux
3
4
6
6
7
8
8
8
7
5
3
3
Cardiff
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bordeaux: 1991-2020 normals, Bordeaux / Merignac (9.5 km from centre). Cardiff: 1991-2020 normals, Cardiff-Wales Airport (14.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBordeauxCardiff
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 15 m
€114-148
BOD · 11 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
GenevaGVA
1 h 20 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 35 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
LyonLYS
1 h 15 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
MarseilleMRS
1 h 15 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 45 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
€77-107
BOD · 11 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
MadridMAD
1 h 20 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
NiceNCE
1 h 25 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BRS · 34 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

MeasureBordeauxCardiff
Official languageFrenchEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation1 m41 m
Main airportBordeaux–Mérignac Airport (BOD)11 km from centre94 non-stop destinationsCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureBordeauxCardiff
City population267,991383,536
People per km²5,4252,734
Museums within 10 km189
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre8155
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bordeaux or Cardiff 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.