VacationSelector

Bucharest or Lisbon?

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

Your match

Bucharest
55
match

Wins on value for money with your weighting.

Lisbon
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage 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.

BucharestLisbon
Beaches & swimming. Lisbon leads by 57 points.57
BucharestLisbon
Score057
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km324
Coast distance198 km2 km
Water distance2 km
Places to eat. Lisbon leads by 13 points.13
BucharestLisbon
Score6780
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6672,496
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4131
Museums & heritage. Lisbon leads by 21 points.21
BucharestLisbon
Score4970
Museums within 10 km73124
Museums within 2 km of centre4054
Share of museums within 2 km %5544
Unesco sites within 50 km03
Nightlife. Lisbon leads by 3 points.3
BucharestLisbon
Score6265
Drinking venues within 4 km1,0171,225
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre541956
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5378
Nightclubs within 4 km8065
Nature & day trips. Lisbon leads by 20 points.20
BucharestLisbon
Score3656
Protected land share 50 km %411
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10054
Park area within 2 km133 hectares77 hectares
Good for families. Lisbon leads by 1 points.1
BucharestLisbon
Score6869
Tourist attractions within 2 km4582
Park area within 2 km133 hectares77 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Lisbon leads by 5 points.5
BucharestLisbon
Score6166
Notable places within 2 km130169
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bucharest leads by 11 points.11
BucharestLisbon
Score8574
Price level global40.955.9
Daily budget€99€109
Year-round weather. Lisbon leads by 15 points.15
BucharestLisbon
Score6378
Monthly daytime high2.8 °C to 30.5 °C14.9 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall33 mm to 82 mm3 mm to 121 mm
Dry months14
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
Bucharest
3
6
12
19
24
28
30
31
25
18
11
4
Lisbon
15
16
19
20
23
26
28
28
26
23
18
15
Sea temperature, °C
Bucharest
No coastline within reach
Lisbon
15
15
15
15
16
18
18
19
19
18
17
16
Rainfall, mm
Bucharest
40
33
42
49
71
82
68
48
62
59
44
47
Lisbon
104
73
72
67
53
13
3
7
36
108
121
102
Daylight, hours per day
Bucharest
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Lisbon
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Bucharest
2
4
5
6
8
9
10
9
7
5
3
2
Lisbon
5
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bucharest: 1991-2020 normals, Bucuresti / Imh (10 km from centre). Lisbon: 1991-2020 normals, Lisboa / Geof (1.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBucharestLisbon
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 10 m
€72-175
OTP · 18 km
2 h 30 m
€112-185
LIS · 7 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 50 m
€118-127
OTP · 18 km
2 h 25 m
€118-145
LIS · 7 km
MadridMAD
3 h 35 m
€109-143
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
1 h 15 m
€64-74
LIS · 7 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 15 m
€45-61
OTP · 18 km
2 h 35 m
€124-144
LIS · 7 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 45 m
€198-212
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
2 h 50 m
€167-189
LIS · 7 km
BarcelonaBCN
3 h 0 m
€92-102
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
1 h 50 m
€74-97
LIS · 7 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 0 m
€79-110
OTP · 18 km
2 h 50 m
€120-145
LIS · 7 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 10 m
€121-131
OTP · 18 km
4 h 25 m
€212-255
LIS · 7 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 30 m
€144-199
OTP · 18 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
LIS · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
9 h 40 m
€669-837
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
7 h 0 m
€621-718
1 stop
LIS · 7 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

MeasureBucharestLisbon
Official languageRomanianPortuguese
CurrencyRomanian Leu (RON)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation70 m100 m
Main airportBucharest Henri Coandă International Airport (OTP)18 km from centre123 non-stop destinationsLisbon Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS)7 km from centre153 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year17 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBucharestLisbon
City population1,716,961545,796
People per km²7,5975,453
Museums within 10 km4178
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km03
Distinct cuisines in the centre68106
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bucharest or Lisbon 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). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

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.