VacationSelector

Bruges or Cardiff?

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

Your match

Bruges
44
match

Wins on good for families and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Cardiff
✓ Best match
48
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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 Bruges if you are travelling with children or want heritage within walking distance: attractions and museums cluster tightly around the centre, and 3 UNESCO-listed places lie within day-trip reach.

Choose Cardiff if you want the coast and open country: the sea is 2km from the centre with 8 beaches nearby, plus a wider choice of bars and clubs.

Scoreboard

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

BrugesCardiff
Beaches & swimming. Cardiff leads by 38 points.38
BrugesCardiff
Score846
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km18
Coast distance14 km2 km
Water distance14 km2 km
Places to eat. Cardiff leads by 3 points.3
BrugesCardiff
Score5760
Restaurants within 2 km of centre443541
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3232
Museums & heritage. Bruges leads by 18 points.18
BrugesCardiff
Score5739
Museums within 10 km3061
Museums within 2 km of centre246
Share of museums within 2 km %8010
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Cardiff leads by 14 points.14
BrugesCardiff
Score3448
Drinking venues within 4 km292536
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre233395
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8074
Nightclubs within 4 km835
Nature & day trips. Cardiff leads by 24 points.24
BrugesCardiff
Score2650
Protected land share 50 km %218
Landscape blanket share 50 km %015
Land share of disc %6568
Park area within 2 km59 hectares88 hectares
Good for families. Bruges leads by 28 points.28
BrugesCardiff
Score6032
Tourist attractions within 2 km524
Park area within 2 km59 hectares88 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Cardiff leads by 5 points.5
BrugesCardiff
Score4045
Notable places within 2 km4051
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bruges leads by 6 points.6
BrugesCardiff
Score6054
Price level global76.284.9
Daily budget€180—
Year-round weather. Bruges leads by 2 points.2
BrugesCardiff
Score5654
Monthly daytime high6.4 °C to 22 °C7.7 °C to 20.2 °C
Monthly rainfall35 mm to 79 mm49 mm to 87 mm
Dry months10
0255075100

Where they differ

Bruges packs many times as many tourist attractions near the centre, which is what makes it the easier city with children in tow; it also has 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Cardiff's 1, and its museums sit tightly around the old core.

Cardiff puts the sea 2km from the centre against 14km at Bruges, with 8 beaches nearby rather than 1. It also has far more protected land around it, 18% against 2%, and more park space near the centre.

Where they are alike

Weather is the closest call: both stay mild rather than hot, Bruges at 6-22°C across the year and Cardiff at 8-20°C, and neither sees the sea reach 21°C, so swimming is bracing in either.

They are also close on eating out, with a similar range of kitchens and only somewhat more restaurants near Cardiff's centre, and on walkability: both keep their notable places within an easy walk of the centre.

Which traveller are you?

Travelling with children: Bruges, where far more tourist attractions sit near the centre and short distances keep days manageable. Cardiff answers with 2 theme parks within reach against Bruges's 1 and more park space, if that is your priority.

Wanting sea and open country: Cardiff. The coast is 2km from the centre, there are 8 beaches nearby against Bruges's 1, and much more of the surrounding land is protected.

Out after dark: Cardiff has roughly twice as many places to drink and many times as many nightclubs. For heritage instead, Bruges keeps its museums tight around the centre, with 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach.

What the numbers don't tell you

No cost comparison is possible here. The dataset carries a daily budget for Bruges, about €180, but no equivalent figure for Cardiff, so nothing on this page tells you which is the cheaper trip. The value ranking rests on a separate measure both cities do have.

A beach close at hand is not the same as a swimming beach. Cardiff's coast is 2km from the centre, but the sea tops out at 18°C in August. And Bruges's warmest months are also among its wettest, so warm weather there does not promise dry days.

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
Bruges
6
7
10
13
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Cardiff
8
8
10
13
16
18
20
20
18
14
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Bruges
7
6
7
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Rainfall, mm
Bruges
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Daylight, hours per day
Bruges
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Bruges
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
2
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. Bruges: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (37.4 km from centre). Cardiff: 1991-2020 normals, Cardiff-Wales Airport (14.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bruges peaks in July and August at 22°C with the sea at 19°C, though those months bring 74-79mm of rain. April is its driest month at 35mm, and May, at 17°C, is warm enough for walking without the summer downpours.

Cardiff is the drier of the two in high summer, around 56-61mm from June to July against Bruges's wetter figures, with highs of 20°C. Its autumn is the wetter one, 87mm in October, so aim earlier.

Getting there

Flying fromBrugesCardiff
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 94 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 25 m
€36-101
BRU · 94 km
1 h 55 m
€85-113
1 stop
BRS · 34 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 94 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 94 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 45 m
€93-156
BRU · 94 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 94 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
€138-162
2 stops
BRU · 94 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 20 m
no fares
LIL · 72 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
CWL · 15 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

MeasureBrugesCardiff
Official languageFrench, German, DutchEnglish
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
Elevation2 m41 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)94 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrugesCardiff
City population118,509383,536
People per km²8402,734
Museums within 10 km389
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre5155
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bruges 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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. 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.