VacationSelector

Budapest or Palermo?

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 good for families and places to eat with your weighting.

Palermo
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

BudapestPalermo
Beaches & swimming. Palermo leads by 67 points.67
BudapestPalermo
Score067
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km613
Coast distance10,000 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Budapest leads by 27 points.27
BudapestPalermo
Score7750
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,699807
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3513
Museums & heritage. Budapest leads by 14 points.14
BudapestPalermo
Score6450
Museums within 10 km14432
Museums within 2 km of centre6426
Share of museums within 2 km %4481
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Budapest leads by 19 points.19
BudapestPalermo
Score7253
Drinking venues within 4 km1,765799
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,168515
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6664
Nightclubs within 4 km9716
Nature & day trips. Budapest leads by 4 points.4
BudapestPalermo
Score4036
Protected land share 50 km %84
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10045
Park area within 2 km111 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Budapest leads by 30 points.30
BudapestPalermo
Score7141
Tourist attractions within 2 km7516
Park area within 2 km111 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Budapest leads by 12 points.12
BudapestPalermo
Score6957
Notable places within 2 km206104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Budapest leads by 12 points.12
BudapestPalermo
Score8068
Price level global4864.9
Daily budget€104€155
Year-round weather. Palermo leads by 13 points.13
BudapestPalermo
Score6477
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 27.9 °C12.6 °C to 27.8 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 75 mm4 mm to 71 mm
Dry months57
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
Palermo
13
13
14
16
20
24
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Budapest
No coastline within reach
Palermo
15
14
15
16
19
22
26
27
25
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Budapest
29
27
30
37
67
67
75
60
48
41
48
39
Palermo
48
45
35
35
18
9
4
11
37
67
71
69
Daylight, hours per day
Budapest
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Palermo
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Budapest
2
4
5
7
9
9
10
9
7
5
3
2
Palermo
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
8
7
5
4

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). Palermo: 1961-1990 normals, Ustica (66.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBudapestPalermo
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 40 m
€42-56
BUD · 18 km
1 h 45 m
€31-110
PMO · 25 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 40 m
€52-62
BUD · 18 km
1 h 10 m
€40-52
PMO · 25 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€63-91
BUD · 18 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 10 m
€97-114
BUD · 18 km
2 h 25 m
€101-135
PMO · 25 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 50 m
€87-214
BUD · 18 km
2 h 15 m
€183-194
PMO · 25 km
NaplesNAP
1 h 40 m
€67-84
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
1 h 0 m
€42-84
PMO · 25 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 25 m
€93-118
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
1 h 50 m
€49-107
PMO · 25 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 0 m
€58-94
BUD · 18 km
2 h 30 m
€106-165
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 40 m
€123-153
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
2 h 15 m
€101-154
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 15 m
€122-156
BUD · 18 km
3 h 10 m
€151-346
1 stop
PMO · 25 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

MeasureBudapestPalermo
Official languageHungarianItalian
CurrencyForint (HUF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation117 m14 m
Main airportBudapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport (BUD)18 km from centre155 non-stop destinationsFalcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBudapestPalermo
City population1,685,209630,167
People per km²3,2093,924
Museums within 10 km8142
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8633
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

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