VacationSelector

Bruges or York?

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

Your match

Bruges
✓ Best match
44
match

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

York
41
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.

The verdict

Choose Bruges if the trip is built around museums, walkable heritage and keeping children occupied: it has about twice as many museums as York and far more tourist attractions clustered near the centre. Summers are a touch warmer too.

Choose York if you want the busier evening, with far more places to drink, and open countryside close by for day trips.

Scoreboard

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

BrugesYork
Beaches & swimming. Bruges leads by 8 points.8
BrugesYork
Score80
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km12
Coast distance14 km50 km
Water distance14 km—
Places to eat. Bruges leads by 3 points.3
BrugesYork
Score5754
Restaurants within 2 km of centre443361
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3231
Museums & heritage. Bruges leads by 11 points.11
BrugesYork
Score5746
Museums within 10 km3018
Museums within 2 km of centre2416
Share of museums within 2 km %8089
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. York leads by 9 points.9
BrugesYork
Score3443
Drinking venues within 4 km292450
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre233353
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8078
Nightclubs within 4 km814
Nature & day trips. York leads by 7 points.7
BrugesYork
Score2633
Protected land share 50 km %217
Landscape blanket share 50 km %016
Land share of disc %6595
Park area within 2 km59 hectares42 hectares
Good for families. Bruges leads by 17 points.17
BrugesYork
Score6043
Tourist attractions within 2 km5213
Park area within 2 km59 hectares42 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. Bruges leads by 1 points.1
BrugesYork
Score4039
Notable places within 2 km4037
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bruges leads by 6 points.6
BrugesYork
Score6054
Price level global76.284.9
Daily budget€180—
Year-round weather. Bruges and York are level on 56.
BrugesYork
Score5656
Monthly daytime high6.4 °C to 22 °C6.7 °C to 20.9 °C
Monthly rainfall35 mm to 79 mm39 mm to 66 mm
Dry months11
0255075100

Where they differ

Bruges is the stronger heritage city, with about twice as many museums as York and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 2. It also has many times as many tourist attractions near the centre, more park space close in, and somewhat more restaurants.

York is better after dark, with far more places to drink and more nightclubs, most of them central. Its countryside is more open: 17% of the land around it is protected against 2% around Bruges, and 3 theme parks lie within reach against Bruges's 1.

Where they are alike

The weather works out much the same across the year. Bruges runs marginally warmer, at 6-22°C against York's 7-21°C, but both are mild rather than hot in summer and neither drops far in winter. Each has 1 month at 40mm of rain or less.

They are also alike on foot and at the table: a similar number of notable places within walking distance of the centre, and a similar range of kitchens, though Bruges has somewhat more restaurants.

Which traveller are you?

Families with young children will get more out of Bruges: many times as many tourist attractions near the centre, more museums and more park space within walking distance, though York's 3 theme parks against Bruges's 1 count if rides matter.

A weekend built around bars and late nights points to York, which has far more places to drink and more nightclubs, most of them near the centre, within a similarly walkable core.

Anyone planning to get out of the city should look at York: 17% of the land around it is protected against 2% around Bruges, so days spent in open country come easier.

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 York, so nothing tells you whether York is dearer or cheaper. The value axis rests on a different measure that both cities have, and is not a price tag.

The beach counts flatter both cities. York has 2 beaches nearby against Bruges's 1, but neither has a month with sea at 21°C or more, so swimming is a cold prospect either way. And Bruges's warmest months are also its wettest, so the best temperatures and the driest days do not arrive together.

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
York
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
20
18
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Bruges
7
6
7
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
York
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Bruges
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
York
53
44
39
48
43
61
56
65
58
66
62
60
Daylight, hours per day
Bruges
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
York
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Bruges
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
2
York
2
3
4
5
6
5
6
5
4
3
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). York: 1991-2020 normals, Leeming (47.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bruges is the better bet in high summer. July and August are the warmest, reaching 22°C, but they are also the wettest, up to 79mm. April is the drier alternative, at 35mm, if cooler days suit.

York peaks in July at 21°C and stays drier through the summer, with 56mm that month against Bruges's heavier totals. Spring is its driest stretch, 39mm in March. Both turn wet in autumn and cold in midwinter, so neither suits a cold-season trip.

Getting there

Flying fromBrugesYork
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 94 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 94 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 45 m
€93-156
BRU · 94 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 94 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 94 km
55 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
7 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 94 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
AgadirAGA
3 h 35 m
no fares
LIL · 72 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
LBA · 39 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

MeasureBrugesYork
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 m25 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)94 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsLeeds Bradford Airport (LBA)39 km from centre73 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrugesYork
City population118,509208,400
People per km²840766
Museums within 10 km3824
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre5154
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 York 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.