VacationSelector

Brussels or Lyon?

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.

Lyon
52
match

Wins on year-round weather 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.

BrusselsLyon
Beaches & swimming. Brussels and Lyon are level on 0.
BrusselsLyon
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km026
Coast distance56 km253 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Brussels leads by 2 points.2
BrusselsLyon
Score8179
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,7791,691
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4440
Museums & heritage. Brussels leads by 25 points.25
BrusselsLyon
Score8055
Museums within 10 km12053
Museums within 2 km of centre5925
Share of museums within 2 km %4947
Unesco sites within 50 km102
Nightlife. Brussels leads by 10 points.10
BrusselsLyon
Score6858
Drinking venues within 4 km1,414866
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre862611
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6171
Nightclubs within 4 km8447
Nature & day trips. Lyon leads by 2 points.2
BrusselsLyon
Score3133
Protected land share 50 km %66
Landscape blanket share 50 km %16
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km65 hectares120 hectares
Good for families. Lyon leads by 3 points.3
BrusselsLyon
Score5659
Tourist attractions within 2 km2825
Park area within 2 km65 hectares120 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Brussels leads by 19 points.19
BrusselsLyon
Score7354
Notable places within 2 km25486
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lyon leads by 2 points.2
BrusselsLyon
Score6062
Price level global76.273.7
Daily budget€180€160
Year-round weather. Lyon leads by 7 points.7
BrusselsLyon
Score5764
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.3 °C7 °C to 28 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 mm43 mm to 101 mm
Dry months00
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
Lyon
7
9
14
17
21
26
28
28
23
18
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Brussels
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Daylight, hours per day
Brussels
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Lyon
9
10
12
14
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
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
6
4
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). Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrusselsLyon
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 11 km
3 h 0 m
€167-217
LYS · 20 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 11 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 11 km
1 h 20 m
€70-92
LYS · 20 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
1 h 30 m
€79-99
LYS · 20 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 11 km
2 h 20 m
€109-165
LYS · 20 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
€138-162
2 stops
BRU · 11 km
1 h 20 m
€195-211
2 stops
LYS · 20 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
6 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 10 m
€421
BRU · 11 km
7 h 35 m
€446-565
1 stop
LYS · 20 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 111 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

MeasureBrusselsLyon
Official languageFrench, German, DutchFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation70 m160 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)11 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrusselsLyon
City population195,546519,127
People per km²5,90810,838
Museums within 10 km10542
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km102
Distinct cuisines in the centre109148

Where else could you go?

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