VacationSelector

Budapest or Ghent?

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 sights concentration with your weighting.

Ghent
50
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

BudapestGhent
Beaches & swimming. Ghent leads by 26 points.26
BudapestGhent
Score026
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km68
Coast distance10,000 km32 km
Water distance32 km
Places to eat. Budapest leads by 7 points.7
BudapestGhent
Score7770
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,699764
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3549
Museums & heritage. Budapest leads by 6 points.6
BudapestGhent
Score6458
Museums within 10 km14424
Museums within 2 km of centre6420
Share of museums within 2 km %4483
Unesco sites within 50 km15
Nightlife. Budapest leads by 23 points.23
BudapestGhent
Score7249
Drinking venues within 4 km1,765570
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,168446
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6678
Nightclubs within 4 km9726
Nature & day trips. Budapest leads by 6 points.6
BudapestGhent
Score4034
Protected land share 50 km %87
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %10087
Park area within 2 km111 hectares84 hectares
Good for families. Budapest leads by 21 points.21
BudapestGhent
Score7150
Tourist attractions within 2 km7519
Park area within 2 km111 hectares84 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Budapest leads by 23 points.23
BudapestGhent
Score6946
Notable places within 2 km20655
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Budapest leads by 20 points.20
BudapestGhent
Score8060
Price level global4876.2
Daily budget€104€180
Year-round weather. Budapest leads by 8 points.8
BudapestGhent
Score6456
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 27.9 °C6.4 °C to 22 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 75 mm35 mm to 79 mm
Dry months51
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
Ghent
6
7
10
13
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Budapest
No coastline within reach
Ghent
6
6
6
9
12
16
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Budapest
29
27
30
37
67
67
75
60
48
41
48
39
Ghent
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Daylight, hours per day
Budapest
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Ghent
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
Ghent
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
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). Ghent: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (44.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBudapestGhent
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€63-91
BUD · 18 km
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
MadridMAD
3 h 0 m
€84-154
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 56 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 25 m
€93-118
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 56 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 50 m
€87-214
BUD · 18 km
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 56 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 40 m
€42-56
BUD · 18 km
1 h 25 m
€36-101
BRU · 56 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 40 m
€52-62
BUD · 18 km
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 40 m
€123-153
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
1 h 0 m
€138-162
2 stops
BRU · 56 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 25 m
€276-394
2 stops
BUD · 18 km
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 15 m
no fares
BUD · 18 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
9 h 5 m
no fares
BUD · 18 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 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 2026-09 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

MeasureBudapestGhent
Official languageHungarianFrench, German, Dutch
CurrencyForint (HUF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation117 m12 m
Main airportBudapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport (BUD)18 km from centre155 non-stop destinationsBrussels Airport (BRU)56 km from centre191 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBudapestGhent
City population1,685,209272,657
People per km²3,2091,728
Museums within 10 km8130
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km15
Distinct cuisines in the centre8683
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Budapest or Ghent 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.