VacationSelector

Brussels or Dresden?

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

Your match

Brussels
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nightlife with your weighting.

Dresden
48
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather 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.

BrusselsDresden
Beaches & swimming. Brussels and Dresden are level on 0.
BrusselsDresden
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km022
Coast distance56 km267 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Brussels leads by 20 points.20
BrusselsDresden
Score8161
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,779422
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4442
Museums & heritage. Brussels leads by 26 points.26
BrusselsDresden
Score8054
Museums within 10 km12066
Museums within 2 km of centre5934
Share of museums within 2 km %4952
Unesco sites within 50 km101
Nightlife. Brussels leads by 26 points.26
BrusselsDresden
Score6842
Drinking venues within 4 km1,414359
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre862265
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6174
Nightclubs within 4 km8443
Nature & day trips. Dresden leads by 8 points.8
BrusselsDresden
Score3139
Protected land share 50 km %614
Landscape blanket share 50 km %19
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km65 hectares80 hectares
Good for families. Dresden leads by 3 points.3
BrusselsDresden
Score5659
Tourist attractions within 2 km2832
Park area within 2 km65 hectares80 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Brussels leads by 20 points.20
BrusselsDresden
Score7353
Notable places within 2 km25482
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Brussels and Dresden are level on 60.
BrusselsDresden
Score6060
Price level global76.275.9
Daily budget€180€163
Year-round weather. Dresden leads by 5 points.5
BrusselsDresden
Score5762
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.3 °C4 °C to 26.2 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 mm31 mm to 83 mm
Dry months04
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
Dresden
4
6
10
17
21
24
26
26
21
15
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Brussels
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
Dresden
46
31
36
36
64
72
80
83
55
49
40
45
Daylight, hours per day
Brussels
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Dresden
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Brussels
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1
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. Brussels: 1991-2020 normals, Uccle (5.2 km from centre). Dresden: 1991-2020 normals, Dresden-Strehlen (3.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrusselsDresden
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 11 km
2 h 15 m
€111-155
PRG · 112 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 11 km
2 h 45 m
€146-195
1 stop
PRG · 112 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
1 h 45 m
€62-97
PRG · 112 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 25 m
€36-101
BRU · 11 km
1 h 25 m
€57-79
PRG · 112 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 11 km
2 h 25 m
€118-136
PRG · 112 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
1 h 40 m
€86-113
PRG · 112 km
AmsterdamAMS
50 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
1 h 30 m
€163-247
PRG · 112 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
8 h 10 m
€737
BER · 147 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
5 h 55 m
€276-321
1 stop
PRG · 112 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
9 h 20 m
€718-820
2 stops
BER · 147 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

MeasureBrusselsDresden
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
Elevation70 m126 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)11 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsDresden Airport (DRS)10 km from centre12 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrusselsDresden
City population195,546564,904
People per km²5,9081,720
Museums within 10 km10570
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km101
Distinct cuisines in the centre10977

Where else could you go?

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