VacationSelector

Brussels or Porto?

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 sights concentration and places to eat with your weighting.

Porto
✓ Best match
62
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.

BrusselsPorto
Beaches & swimming. Porto leads by 60 points.60
BrusselsPorto
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km052
Coast distance56 km4 km
Water distance3 km
Places to eat. Brussels leads by 13 points.13
BrusselsPorto
Score8168
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,7791,172
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4427
Museums & heritage. Brussels leads by 9 points.9
BrusselsPorto
Score8071
Museums within 10 km120101
Museums within 2 km of centre5957
Share of museums within 2 km %4956
Unesco sites within 50 km103
Nightlife. Brussels leads by 10 points.10
BrusselsPorto
Score6858
Drinking venues within 4 km1,414900
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre862570
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6163
Nightclubs within 4 km8438
Nature & day trips. Porto leads by 2 points.2
BrusselsPorto
Score3133
Protected land share 50 km %67
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %10061
Park area within 2 km65 hectares30 hectares
Good for families. Porto leads by 9 points.9
BrusselsPorto
Score5665
Tourist attractions within 2 km28122
Park area within 2 km65 hectares30 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Brussels leads by 19 points.19
BrusselsPorto
Score7354
Notable places within 2 km25485
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Porto leads by 14 points.14
BrusselsPorto
Score6074
Price level global76.255.9
Daily budget€180€109
Year-round weather. Porto leads by 14 points.14
BrusselsPorto
Score5771
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.3 °C13.8 °C to 25.2 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 mm22 mm to 181 mm
Dry months03
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
Porto
14
15
18
18
21
23
25
25
24
20
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Brussels
No coastline within reach
Porto
14
13
14
14
16
17
17
17
17
17
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Brussels
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
Porto
151
97
104
99
89
35
22
33
75
158
181
173
Daylight, hours per day
Brussels
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Porto
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Brussels
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1
Porto
5
5
7
8
9
9
10
9
8
5
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Brussels: 1991-2020 normals, Uccle (5.2 km from centre). Porto: 1991-2020 normals, Porto / Serra Do Pilar (2.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrusselsPorto
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 11 km
1 h 10 m
€70-124
OPO · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
2 h 5 m
€88-127
OPO · 12 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 11 km
1 h 45 m
€81-135
OPO · 12 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
2 h 10 m
€90-144
1 stop
OPO · 12 km
GenevaGVA
1 h 20 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
2 h 10 m
€128-166
1 stop
OPO · 12 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 11 km
1 h 0 m
€81
OPO · 12 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 25 m
€36-101
BRU · 11 km
2 h 25 m
€81-96
OPO · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
OPO · 12 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 30 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
OPO · 12 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
10 h 15 m
no fares
OPO · 12 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

MeasureBrusselsPorto
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 m104 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)11 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsFrancisco de Sá Carneiro Airport (OPO)12 km from centre132 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrusselsPorto
City population195,546231,800
People per km²5,9085,599
Museums within 10 km10542
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km103
Distinct cuisines in the centre10970
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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