VacationSelector

Brussels or York?

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.

York
41
match

Wins on 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.

BrusselsYork
Beaches & swimming. Brussels and York are level on 0.
BrusselsYork
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km02
Coast distance56 km50 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Brussels leads by 27 points.27
BrusselsYork
Score8154
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,779361
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4431
Museums & heritage. Brussels leads by 34 points.34
BrusselsYork
Score8046
Museums within 10 km12018
Museums within 2 km of centre5916
Share of museums within 2 km %4989
Unesco sites within 50 km102
Nightlife. Brussels leads by 25 points.25
BrusselsYork
Score6843
Drinking venues within 4 km1,414450
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre862353
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6178
Nightclubs within 4 km8414
Nature & day trips. York leads by 2 points.2
BrusselsYork
Score3133
Protected land share 50 km %617
Landscape blanket share 50 km %116
Land share of disc %10095
Park area within 2 km65 hectares42 hectares
Good for families. Brussels leads by 13 points.13
BrusselsYork
Score5643
Tourist attractions within 2 km2813
Park area within 2 km65 hectares42 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km23
Sights concentration. Brussels leads by 34 points.34
BrusselsYork
Score7339
Notable places within 2 km25437
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Brussels leads by 6 points.6
BrusselsYork
Score6054
Price level global76.284.9
Daily budget€180
Year-round weather. Brussels leads by 1 points.1
BrusselsYork
Score5756
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.3 °C6.7 °C to 20.9 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 mm39 mm to 66 mm
Dry months01
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
York
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
20
18
14
10
7
Rainfall, mm
Brussels
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
York
53
44
39
48
43
61
56
65
58
66
62
60
Daylight, hours per day
Brussels
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
York
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Brussels
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1
York
2
3
4
5
6
5
6
5
4
3
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Brussels: 1991-2020 normals, Uccle (5.2 km from centre). York: 1991-2020 normals, Leeming (47.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrusselsYork
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 11 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 45 m
€177-223
BRU · 11 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 25 m
€114-153
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
GenevaGVA
1 h 20 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 11 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
BucharestOTP, BBU
2 h 45 m
€72-114
CRL · 43 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
7 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
AgadirAGA
3 h 40 m
no fares
CRL · 43 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
MAN · 104 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

MeasureBrusselsYork
Official languageFrench, German, DutchEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation70 m25 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)11 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsLeeds Bradford Airport (LBA)39 km from centre73 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrusselsYork
City population195,546208,400
People per km²5,908766
Museums within 10 km10524
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km102
Distinct cuisines in the centre10954

Where else could you go?

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