VacationSelector

Budapest or Rome?

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 places to eat and value for money with your weighting.

Rome
✓ Best match
72
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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.

BudapestRome
Beaches & swimming. Rome leads by 33 points.33
BudapestRome
Score033
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km63
Coast distance10,000 km24 km
Water distance24 km
Places to eat. Budapest leads by 17 points.17
BudapestRome
Score7760
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,6992,241
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3510
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 20 points.20
BudapestRome
Score6484
Museums within 10 km144161
Museums within 2 km of centre6479
Share of museums within 2 km %4449
Unesco sites within 50 km17
Nightlife. Rome leads by 2 points.2
BudapestRome
Score7274
Drinking venues within 4 km1,7652,022
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,168912
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6645
Nightclubs within 4 km9785
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 30 points.30
BudapestRome
Score4070
Protected land share 50 km %819
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10078
Park area within 2 km111 hectares172 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 15 points.15
BudapestRome
Score7186
Tourist attractions within 2 km75126
Park area within 2 km111 hectares172 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km14
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 30 points.30
BudapestRome
Score6999
Notable places within 2 km2061,125
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Budapest leads by 12 points.12
BudapestRome
Score8068
Price level global4864.9
Daily budget€104€155
Year-round weather. Rome leads by 7 points.7
BudapestRome
Score6471
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 27.9 °C12 °C to 31.4 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 75 mm21 mm to 114 mm
Dry months53
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
Rome
12
13
16
18
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Budapest
No coastline within reach
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Budapest
29
27
30
37
67
67
75
60
48
41
48
39
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
Daylight, hours per day
Budapest
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Rome
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Budapest
2
4
5
7
9
9
10
9
7
5
3
2
Rome
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
4
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). Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBudapestRome
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€63-91
BUD · 18 km
2 h 20 m
€76-143
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 10 m
€97-114
BUD · 18 km
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
MadridMAD
3 h 0 m
€84-154
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
2 h 15 m
€98-119
FCO · 23 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 25 m
€93-118
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
1 h 40 m
€44-74
FCO · 23 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 50 m
€87-214
BUD · 18 km
2 h 15 m
€136-291
FCO · 23 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 40 m
€42-56
BUD · 18 km
1 h 15 m
€84-118
FCO · 23 km
CataniaCTA
2 h 0 m
€70-86
BUD · 18 km
1 h 20 m
€60-112
FCO · 23 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 15 m
€122-156
BUD · 18 km
3 h 20 m
€115-179
FCO · 23 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 15 m
no fares
BUD · 18 km
11 h 15 m
€630-760
FCO · 23 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
9 h 5 m
no fares
BUD · 18 km
9 h 0 m
€487-550
1 stop
FCO · 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

MeasureBudapestRome
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 m21 m
Main airportBudapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport (BUD)18 km from centre155 non-stop destinationsRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBudapestRome
City population1,685,2092,748,109
People per km²3,2092,135
Museums within 10 km81177
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km17
Distinct cuisines in the centre8665
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 Rome 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.