VacationSelector

Bruges or Philadelphia?

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 value for money and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Philadelphia
✓ Best match
51
match

Wins on nightlife 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.

Scoreboard

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

BrugesPhiladelphia
Beaches & swimming. Bruges leads by 8 points.8
BrugesPhiladelphia
Score80
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km11
Coast distance14 km13 km
Water distance14 km
Places to eat. Philadelphia leads by 20 points.20
BrugesPhiladelphia
Score5777
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4431,714
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3235
Museums & heritage. Philadelphia leads by 3 points.3
BrugesPhiladelphia
Score5760
Museums within 10 km3089
Museums within 2 km of centre2448
Share of museums within 2 km %8054
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Philadelphia leads by 25 points.25
BrugesPhiladelphia
Score3459
Drinking venues within 4 km292930
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre233575
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8062
Nightclubs within 4 km841
Nature & day trips. Philadelphia leads by 23 points.23
BrugesPhiladelphia
Score2649
Protected land share 50 km %214
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6589
Park area within 2 km59 hectares75 hectares
Good for families. Bruges leads by 7 points.7
BrugesPhiladelphia
Score6053
Tourist attractions within 2 km5216
Park area within 2 km59 hectares75 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km14
Sights concentration. Philadelphia leads by 14 points.14
BrugesPhiladelphia
Score4054
Notable places within 2 km4088
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bruges leads by 17 points.17
BrugesPhiladelphia
Score6043
Price level global76.2100
Daily budget€180
Year-round weather. Philadelphia leads by 4 points.4
BrugesPhiladelphia
Score5660
Monthly daytime high6.4 °C to 22 °C5.2 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall35 mm to 79 mm69 mm to 112 mm
Dry months10
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
Philadelphia
5
7
12
18
24
28
31
30
26
20
13
8
Sea temperature, °C
Bruges
7
6
7
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Philadelphia
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Bruges
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Philadelphia
79
69
101
88
86
103
111
109
112
88
74
101
Daylight, hours per day
Bruges
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Philadelphia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bruges
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
2
Philadelphia
4
5
6
7
9
9
8
9
7
7
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bruges: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (37.4 km from centre). Philadelphia: 1991-2020 normals, Philadelphia International Airport (11.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrugesPhiladelphia
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 94 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 94 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 94 km
8 h 55 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
6 h 50 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 94 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 45 m
€93-156
BRU · 94 km
8 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 94 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 140 km
DohaDOH
6 h 25 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
13 h 30 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
JFK · 140 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

MeasureBrugesPhiladelphia
Official languageFrench, German, Dutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation2 m12 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)94 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsPhiladelphia International Airport (PHL)11 km from centre128 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrugesPhiladelphia
City population118,5091,603,797
People per km²8404,339
Museums within 10 km3854
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre5175
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 Philadelphia 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.