VacationSelector

Budapest or Dresden?

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

Your match

Budapest
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on nightlife and value for money with your weighting.

Dresden
48
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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.

BudapestDresden
Beaches & swimming. Budapest and Dresden are level on 0.
BudapestDresden
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km622
Coast distance10,000 km267 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Budapest leads by 16 points.16
BudapestDresden
Score7761
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,699422
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3542
Museums & heritage. Budapest leads by 10 points.10
BudapestDresden
Score6454
Museums within 10 km14466
Museums within 2 km of centre6434
Share of museums within 2 km %4452
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Budapest leads by 30 points.30
BudapestDresden
Score7242
Drinking venues within 4 km1,765359
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,168265
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6674
Nightclubs within 4 km9743
Nature & day trips. Budapest leads by 1 points.1
BudapestDresden
Score4039
Protected land share 50 km %814
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km111 hectares80 hectares
Good for families. Budapest leads by 12 points.12
BudapestDresden
Score7159
Tourist attractions within 2 km7532
Park area within 2 km111 hectares80 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Budapest leads by 16 points.16
BudapestDresden
Score6953
Notable places within 2 km20682
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Budapest leads by 20 points.20
BudapestDresden
Score8060
Price level global4875.9
Daily budget€104€163
Year-round weather. Budapest leads by 2 points.2
BudapestDresden
Score6462
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 27.9 °C4 °C to 26.2 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 75 mm31 mm to 83 mm
Dry months54
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
Budapest
4
7
11
17
22
26
27
28
22
16
9
4
Dresden
4
6
10
17
21
24
26
26
21
15
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Budapest
29
27
30
37
67
67
75
60
48
41
48
39
Dresden
46
31
36
36
64
72
80
83
55
49
40
45
Daylight, hours per day
Budapest
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Dresden
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Budapest
2
4
5
7
9
9
10
9
7
5
3
2
Dresden
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
7
6
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Budapest: 1991-2020 normals, Budapest Met Center (2.1 km from centre). Dresden: 1991-2020 normals, Dresden-Strehlen (3.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBudapestDresden
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 10 m
€97-114
BUD · 18 km
1 h 40 m
€86-113
PRG · 112 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 40 m
€42-56
BUD · 18 km
1 h 25 m
€57-79
PRG · 112 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€63-91
BUD · 18 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
LEJ · 113 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 5 m
€175-230
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
1 h 30 m
€163-247
PRG · 112 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 50 m
€87-214
BUD · 18 km
2 h 25 m
€118-136
PRG · 112 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 40 m
€52-62
BUD · 18 km
1 h 45 m
€62-97
PRG · 112 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 25 m
€93-118
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
2 h 15 m
€111-155
PRG · 112 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 15 m
€122-156
BUD · 18 km
4 h 0 m
€208-225
1 stop
BER · 147 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 15 m
no fares
BUD · 18 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
PRG · 112 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
9 h 5 m
no fares
BUD · 18 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
PRG · 112 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

MeasureBudapestDresden
Official languageHungarianGerman
CurrencyForint (HUF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation117 m126 m
Main airportBudapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport (BUD)18 km from centre155 non-stop destinationsDresden Airport (DRS)10 km from centre12 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBudapestDresden
City population1,685,209564,904
People per km²3,2091,720
Museums within 10 km8170
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8677

Where else could you go?

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