VacationSelector

Brussels or New York?

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 value for money with your weighting.

New York
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife 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.

BrusselsNew York
Beaches & swimming. New York leads by 64 points.64
BrusselsNew York
Score064
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km017
Coast distance56 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. New York leads by 14 points.14
BrusselsNew York
Score8195
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,7796,032
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4438
Museums & heritage. Brussels leads by 20 points.20
BrusselsNew York
Score8060
Museums within 10 km120119
Museums within 2 km of centre5931
Share of museums within 2 km %4926
Unesco sites within 50 km102
Nightlife. New York leads by 21 points.21
BrusselsNew York
Score6889
Drinking venues within 4 km1,4144,159
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre8622,015
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6148
Nightclubs within 4 km84192
Nature & day trips. New York leads by 8 points.8
BrusselsNew York
Score3139
Protected land share 50 km %64
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %10069
Park area within 2 km65 hectares134 hectares
Good for families. New York leads by 16 points.16
BrusselsNew York
Score5672
Tourist attractions within 2 km2837
Park area within 2 km65 hectares134 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km27
Sights concentration. New York leads by 1 points.1
BrusselsNew York
Score7374
Notable places within 2 km254268
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Brussels leads by 17 points.17
BrusselsNew York
Score6043
Price level global76.2100
Daily budget€180
Year-round weather. New York leads by 1 points.1
BrusselsNew York
Score5758
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.3 °C4.5 °C to 30.1 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 mm74 mm to 112 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
New York
5
6
10
16
22
27
30
29
25
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Brussels
No coastline within reach
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
Rainfall, mm
Brussels
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
Daylight, hours per day
Brussels
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
New York
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Brussels
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1
New York
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). New York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrusselsNew York
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 11 km
7 h 25 m
€474-553
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
7 h 10 m
€459-498
JFK · 21 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
8 h 45 m
€362-464
JFK · 21 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 11 km
7 h 55 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
8 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
1 h 5 m
€203-258
LGA · 13 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
€138-162
2 stops
BRU · 11 km
7 h 55 m
€439-457
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 25 m
€36-101
BRU · 11 km
8 h 15 m
€430-458
JFK · 21 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
13 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 21 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
JFK · 21 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

MeasureBrusselsNew York
Official languageFrench, German, Dutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation70 m25 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)11 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrusselsNew York
City population195,5468,804,190
People per km²5,9087,256
Museums within 10 km105157
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km102
Distinct cuisines in the centre109132
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 New York 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.