VacationSelector

Brussels or Bucharest?

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

Brussels
56
match

Wins on museums & heritage and places to eat with your weighting.

Bucharest
55
match

Wins on value for money and good for families 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.

BrusselsBucharest
Beaches & swimming. Brussels and Bucharest are level on 0.
BrusselsBucharest
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km03
Coast distance56 km198 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Brussels leads by 14 points.14
BrusselsBucharest
Score8167
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,779667
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4441
Museums & heritage. Brussels leads by 31 points.31
BrusselsBucharest
Score8049
Museums within 10 km12073
Museums within 2 km of centre5940
Share of museums within 2 km %4955
Unesco sites within 50 km100
Nightlife. Brussels leads by 6 points.6
BrusselsBucharest
Score6862
Drinking venues within 4 km1,4141,017
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre862541
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6153
Nightclubs within 4 km8480
Nature & day trips. Bucharest leads by 5 points.5
BrusselsBucharest
Score3136
Protected land share 50 km %64
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km65 hectares133 hectares
Good for families. Bucharest leads by 12 points.12
BrusselsBucharest
Score5668
Tourist attractions within 2 km2845
Park area within 2 km65 hectares133 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Brussels leads by 12 points.12
BrusselsBucharest
Score7361
Notable places within 2 km254130
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bucharest leads by 25 points.25
BrusselsBucharest
Score6085
Price level global76.240.9
Daily budget€180€99
Year-round weather. Bucharest leads by 6 points.6
BrusselsBucharest
Score5763
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.3 °C2.8 °C to 30.5 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 mm33 mm to 82 mm
Dry months01
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
Brussels
6
7
11
15
18
21
23
23
20
15
10
6
Bucharest
3
6
12
19
24
28
30
31
25
18
11
4
Rainfall, mm
Brussels
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
Bucharest
40
33
42
49
71
82
68
48
62
59
44
47
Daylight, hours per day
Brussels
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Bucharest
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Brussels
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1
Bucharest
2
4
5
6
8
9
10
9
7
5
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Brussels: 1991-2020 normals, Uccle (5.2 km from centre). Bucharest: 1991-2020 normals, Bucuresti / Imh (10 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrusselsBucharest
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
3 h 10 m
€72-175
OTP · 18 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 11 km
3 h 35 m
€109-143
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 11 km
1 h 10 m
€121-131
OTP · 18 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
2 h 0 m
€79-110
OTP · 18 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 25 m
€36-101
BRU · 11 km
2 h 15 m
€45-61
OTP · 18 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 11 km
3 h 0 m
€92-102
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 45 m
€93-156
BRU · 11 km
1 h 40 m
€92-150
OTP · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
€138-162
2 stops
BRU · 11 km
2 h 20 m
€123-173
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
OTP · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
9 h 40 m
€669-837
1 stop
OTP · 18 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

MeasureBrusselsBucharest
Official languageFrench, German, DutchRomanian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Romanian Leu (RON)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation70 m70 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)11 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsBucharest Henri Coandă International Airport (OTP)18 km from centre123 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days17 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrusselsBucharest
City population195,5461,716,961
People per km²5,9087,597
Museums within 10 km10541
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km100
Distinct cuisines in the centre10968

Where else could you go?

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