VacationSelector

Brussels or Manila?

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

Your match

Brussels
56
match

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

Manila
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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.

BrusselsManila
Beaches & swimming. Manila leads by 76 points.76
BrusselsManila
Score076
Swim season months012
Beaches 10 km03
Coast distance56 km2 km
Water distance2 km
Places to eat. Brussels leads by 23 points.23
BrusselsManila
Score8158
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,7791,015
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4417
Museums & heritage. Brussels leads by 30 points.30
BrusselsManila
Score8050
Museums within 10 km12077
Museums within 2 km of centre5923
Share of museums within 2 km %4930
Unesco sites within 50 km101
Nightlife. Brussels leads by 7 points.7
BrusselsManila
Score6861
Drinking venues within 4 km1,4141,082
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre862374
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6135
Nightclubs within 4 km8436
Nature & day trips. Brussels leads by 2 points.2
BrusselsManila
Score3129
Protected land share 50 km %64
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %10078
Park area within 2 km65 hectares54 hectares
Good for families. Manila leads by 4 points.4
BrusselsManila
Score5660
Tourist attractions within 2 km2837
Park area within 2 km65 hectares54 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km23
Sights concentration. Brussels leads by 21 points.21
BrusselsManila
Score7352
Notable places within 2 km25479
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Manila leads by 30 points.30
BrusselsManila
Score6090
Price level global76.233.7
Daily budget€180
Year-round weather. Manila leads by 4 points.4
BrusselsManila
Score5761
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.3 °C30.5 °C to 34.6 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 mm24 mm to 564 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
Manila
31
31
33
35
34
33
32
31
31
32
31
31
Sea temperature, °C
Brussels
No coastline within reach
Manila
27
27
28
29
30
30
29
29
29
29
28
28
Rainfall, mm
Brussels
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
Manila
26
24
40
36
220
314
487
564
509
297
152
109
Daylight, hours per day
Brussels
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Manila
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
Sunshine, hours per day
Brussels
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1
Manila
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Brussels: 1991-2020 normals, Uccle (5.2 km from centre). Manila: 1991-2020 normals, Science Garden (6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrusselsManila
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
4 h 10 m
€304-317
MNL · 11 km
Hong KongHKG
11 h 40 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
2 h 0 m
€128-135
MNL · 11 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
8 h 45 m
€428-448
MNL · 11 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 11 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
16 h 45 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
13 h 5 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
3 h 30 m
€154-174
MNL · 11 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
3 h 15 m
€205-213
MNL · 11 km
DohaDOH
6 h 25 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
9 h 15 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
4 h 5 m
€211-222
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 15 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
2 h 50 m
€210-218
1 stop
MNL · 11 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

MeasureBrusselsManila
Official languageFrench, German, DutchEnglish, Filipino, Taglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Philippine Peso (PHP)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzABC220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number112911
Elevation70 m9 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)11 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsNinoy Aquino International Airport (MNL)11 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days18 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrusselsManila
City population195,5461,902,590
People per km²5,90876,104
Museums within 10 km10527
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km101
Distinct cuisines in the centre10939
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months

Where else could you go?

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