VacationSelector

Bruges or Dresden?

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 beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Dresden
✓ Best match
48
match

Wins on nature & day trips and sights concentration 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.

BrugesDresden
Beaches & swimming. Bruges leads by 8 points.8
BrugesDresden
Score80
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km122
Coast distance14 km267 km
Water distance14 km
Places to eat. Dresden leads by 4 points.4
BrugesDresden
Score5761
Restaurants within 2 km of centre443422
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3242
Museums & heritage. Bruges leads by 3 points.3
BrugesDresden
Score5754
Museums within 10 km3066
Museums within 2 km of centre2434
Share of museums within 2 km %8052
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Dresden leads by 8 points.8
BrugesDresden
Score3442
Drinking venues within 4 km292359
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre233265
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8074
Nightclubs within 4 km843
Nature & day trips. Dresden leads by 13 points.13
BrugesDresden
Score2639
Protected land share 50 km %214
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %65100
Park area within 2 km59 hectares80 hectares
Good for families. Bruges leads by 1 points.1
BrugesDresden
Score6059
Tourist attractions within 2 km5232
Park area within 2 km59 hectares80 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Dresden leads by 13 points.13
BrugesDresden
Score4053
Notable places within 2 km4082
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bruges and Dresden are level on 60.
BrugesDresden
Score6060
Price level global76.275.9
Daily budget€180€163
Year-round weather. Dresden leads by 6 points.6
BrugesDresden
Score5662
Monthly daytime high6.4 °C to 22 °C4 °C to 26.2 °C
Monthly rainfall35 mm to 79 mm31 mm to 83 mm
Dry months14
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
Bruges
6
7
10
13
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Dresden
4
6
10
17
21
24
26
26
21
15
9
6
Sea temperature, °C
Bruges
7
6
7
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Dresden
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Bruges
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Dresden
46
31
36
36
64
72
80
83
55
49
40
45
Daylight, hours per day
Bruges
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Dresden
9
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
Dresden
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
7
6
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). Dresden: 1991-2020 normals, Dresden-Strehlen (3.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrugesDresden
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 94 km
2 h 45 m
€146-195
1 stop
PRG · 112 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 94 km
1 h 45 m
€62-97
PRG · 112 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 25 m
€36-101
BRU · 94 km
1 h 25 m
€57-79
PRG · 112 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 94 km
2 h 25 m
€118-136
PRG · 112 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
8 h 10 m
€737
BER · 147 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
€138-162
2 stops
BRU · 94 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
DRS · 10 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 45 m
€93-156
BRU · 94 km
1 h 0 m
€123-212
1 stop
PRG · 112 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 94 km
3 h 15 m
€176-241
1 stop
PRG · 112 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
9 h 20 m
€718-820
2 stops
BER · 147 km
HurghadaHRG
4 h 55 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
4 h 20 m
no fares
DRS · 10 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

MeasureBrugesDresden
Official languageFrench, German, DutchGerman
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation2 m126 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)94 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsDresden Airport (DRS)10 km from centre12 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrugesDresden
City population118,509564,904
People per km²8401,720
Museums within 10 km3870
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre5177
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bruges or Dresden 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. 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.