VacationSelector

Brussels or Faro?

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 sights concentration with your weighting.

Faro
47
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

BrusselsFaro
Beaches & swimming. Faro leads by 61 points.61
BrusselsFaro
Score061
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km013
Coast distance56 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Brussels leads by 37 points.37
BrusselsFaro
Score8144
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,779255
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4422
Museums & heritage. Brussels leads by 58 points.58
BrusselsFaro
Score8022
Museums within 10 km1209
Museums within 2 km of centre598
Share of museums within 2 km %4989
Unesco sites within 50 km100
Nightlife. Brussels leads by 47 points.47
BrusselsFaro
Score6821
Drinking venues within 4 km1,414143
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre862123
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6186
Nightclubs within 4 km848
Nature & day trips. Faro leads by 26 points.26
BrusselsFaro
Score3157
Protected land share 50 km %611
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %10042
Park area within 2 km65 hectares34 hectares
Good for families. Brussels leads by 20 points.20
BrusselsFaro
Score5636
Tourist attractions within 2 km2810
Park area within 2 km65 hectares34 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Brussels leads by 51 points.51
BrusselsFaro
Score7322
Notable places within 2 km25414
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Faro leads by 14 points.14
BrusselsFaro
Score6074
Price level global76.255.9
Daily budget€180€109
Year-round weather. Faro leads by 26 points.26
BrusselsFaro
Score5783
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.3 °C16.3 °C to 29 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 mm1 mm to 102 mm
Dry months06
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
Faro
16
17
19
21
24
27
29
29
26
23
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Brussels
No coastline within reach
Faro
17
16
16
17
18
20
21
22
21
21
19
17
Rainfall, mm
Brussels
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
Faro
55
39
44
40
23
6
1
5
28
57
75
102
Daylight, hours per day
Brussels
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Faro
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Brussels
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1
Faro
6
6
8
9
10
12
12
11
9
8
6
6

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Brussels: 1991-2020 normals, Uccle (5.2 km from centre). Faro: 1991-2020 normals, Faro / Aeroporto (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrusselsFaro
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
2 h 50 m
€75-114
FAO · 3 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 11 km
1 h 20 m
€46-52
FAO · 3 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 20 m
no fares
CRL · 43 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 11 km
55 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 11 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
€138-162
2 stops
BRU · 11 km
3 h 0 m
€137-201
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
GenevaGVA
1 h 20 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
2 h 30 m
€116-130
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
7 h 15 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 30 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
FAO · 3 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

MeasureBrusselsFaro
Official languageFrench, German, DutchPortuguese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation70 m10 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)11 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsFaro - Gago Coutinho International Airport (FAO)3 km from centre91 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrusselsFaro
City population195,54664,560
People per km²5,908319
Museums within 10 km1052
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km100
Distinct cuisines in the centre10934
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Brussels or Faro 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.