VacationSelector

Budapest or London?

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

Your match

Budapest
60
match

Wins on value for money and year-round weather with your weighting.

London
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration 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.

BudapestLondon
Beaches & swimming. Budapest and London are level on 0.
BudapestLondon
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km647
Coast distance10,000 km43 km
Water distance
Places to eat. London leads by 11 points.11
BudapestLondon
Score7788
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,6993,317
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3540
Museums & heritage. London leads by 8 points.8
BudapestLondon
Score6472
Museums within 10 km144148
Museums within 2 km of centre6449
Share of museums within 2 km %4433
Unesco sites within 50 km14
Nightlife. London leads by 23 points.23
BudapestLondon
Score7295
Drinking venues within 4 km1,7655,327
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,1682,443
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6646
Nightclubs within 4 km97312
Nature & day trips. Budapest and London are level on 40.
BudapestLondon
Score4040
Protected land share 50 km %816
Landscape blanket share 50 km %014
Land share of disc %10097
Park area within 2 km111 hectares84 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 4 points.4
BudapestLondon
Score7175
Tourist attractions within 2 km7585
Park area within 2 km111 hectares84 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. London leads by 20 points.20
BudapestLondon
Score6989
Notable places within 2 km206649
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Budapest leads by 26 points.26
BudapestLondon
Score8054
Price level global4884.9
Daily budget€104
Year-round weather. Budapest leads by 1 points.1
BudapestLondon
Score6463
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 27.9 °C8.2 °C to 23.8 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 75 mm38 mm to 67 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
London
8
9
12
15
18
22
24
23
20
16
11
9
Rainfall, mm
Budapest
29
27
30
37
67
67
75
60
48
41
48
39
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Daylight, hours per day
Budapest
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
London
8
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
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
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). London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBudapestLondon
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 40 m
€42-56
BUD · 18 km
1 h 45 m
€83-138
LGW · 40 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 25 m
€93-118
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
2 h 0 m
€61-144
LGW · 40 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 10 m
€97-114
BUD · 18 km
1 h 5 m
€92-144
LHR · 23 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 50 m
€87-214
BUD · 18 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 5 m
€175-230
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
1 h 5 m
€146-170
LHR · 23 km
AntalyaAYT
2 h 25 m
€151-177
BUD · 18 km
4 h 5 m
€144-189
LGW · 40 km
MadridMAD
3 h 0 m
€84-154
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
2 h 10 m
€124-216
LHR · 23 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 15 m
€122-156
BUD · 18 km
4 h 55 m
no fares
LTN · 44 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
10 h 30 m
€698-839
3 stops
BUD · 18 km
11 h 30 m
€665-831
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
9 h 5 m
no fares
BUD · 18 km
7 h 25 m
no fares
LHR · 23 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

MeasureBudapestLondon
Official languageHungarianEnglish
CurrencyForint (HUF)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation117 m4 m
Main airportBudapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport (BUD)18 km from centre155 non-stop destinationsLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureBudapestLondon
City population1,685,2098,799,728
People per km²3,2095,598
Museums within 10 km81215
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km14
Distinct cuisines in the centre86116

Where else could you go?

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