Budapest or Split?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on good for families and places to eat with your weighting.
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.
The verdict
Choose Budapest if the trip is about eating out, evenings and walkable sightseeing with children in tow: attractions and parks sit close to the centre, with a theme park within reach, and summer highs reach 28°C.
Choose Split if you want to swim: 87 beaches nearby, sea warm enough through summer, and a compact old core rather than a broad city.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Split leads by 73 points.73
| Budapest | Split | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 73 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 4 |
| Beaches 10 km | 6 | 87 |
| Coast distance | 10,000 km | 0 km |
| Water distance | — | 0 km |
Places to eat. Budapest leads by 39 points.39
| Budapest | Split | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 77 | 38 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 1,699 | 268 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 35 | 15 |
Museums & heritage. Budapest leads by 12 points.12
| Budapest | Split | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 64 | 52 |
| Museums within 10 km | 144 | 18 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 64 | 16 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 44 | 89 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 1 | 4 |
Nightlife. Budapest leads by 31 points.31
| Budapest | Split | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 72 | 41 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 1,765 | 379 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 1,168 | 263 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 66 | 69 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 97 | 23 |
Nature & day trips. Budapest leads by 2 points.2
| Budapest | Split | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 40 | 38 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 8 | 9 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 62 |
| Park area within 2 km | 111 hectares | 30 hectares |
Good for families. Budapest leads by 45 points.45
| Budapest | Split | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 71 | 26 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 75 | 9 |
| Park area within 2 km | 111 hectares | 30 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 1 | 0 |
Sights concentration. Budapest leads by 27 points.27
| Budapest | Split | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 69 | 42 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 206 | 43 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Budapest and Split are level on 80.
| Budapest | Split | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 80 | 80 |
| Price level global | 48 | 48.5 |
| Daily budget | €104 | €138 |
Year-round weather. Split leads by 5 points.5
| Budapest | Split | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 64 | 69 |
| Monthly daytime high | 3.6 °C to 27.9 °C | 10.7 °C to 31 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 27 mm to 75 mm | 25 mm to 117 mm |
| Dry months | 5 | 2 |
Where they differ
Budapest has many times as many restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens, many times as many bars and clubs, and many more notable places within walking distance. For families it has about three times as much park space near the centre and 1 theme park within reach where Split has none.
Split has 87 beaches nearby against Budapest's 6, and sea warm enough for swimming through summer. It counts 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Budapest's 1, its museums tightly grouped around the centre.
Where they are alike
On value the two land in the same place. The daily budgets are national figures, €104 for Hungary and €138 for Croatia, and neither tells you what a capital or a heavily visited coastal city costs.
Protected land is comparable around both, 9% near Split and 8% near Budapest, so neither is chiefly a base for wild country. Year-round weather is closer than the coast implies: both are sunny by European standards and both give a long warm season.
Which traveller are you?
Travelling with children: Budapest. Attractions and parks cluster near the centre, there is 1 theme park within reach, and about three times as much park space as Split for breaking up a day of sightseeing.
Here to swim: Split, without contest. It has 87 beaches nearby against Budapest's 6, sea reaching 25°C at the peak of summer, and the year's driest weather falling in midsummer.
Heritage and day trips: Split for a compact old centre with 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach; Budapest if you want many more museums and a wider choice of restaurants and bars between them.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget is a national estimate of restaurant and hotel prices, €104 for Hungary and €138 for Croatia, not a measurement of Budapest or Split. A capital and a heavily visited coastal city can each sit far from their own country's average, by more than the gap between these two figures, so treat the difference as background rather than as what your trip will cost.
Split's beach strength is seasonal, not year-round: the warm sea and the driest weather arrive together in midsummer, which is also when the coast is fullest. Outside that window the same beaches come with rain, 117mm in November.
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.
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). Split: 1991-2020 normals, Split / Marjan (0.9 km from centre).
Budapest works from May to September, with highs of 22-28°C. Those months are also the wettest, near 60-75mm, so April is the drier option for walking, at 17°C.
Split's best run is June to September. Midsummer is the hottest and driest of the year, 31°C with 25-32mm of rain, and the sea reaches 25°C. Autumn turns wet quickly, and November is the wettest month at 117mm, though winter days stay mild and swimming is over.
Getting there
| Flying from | Budapest | Split |
|---|---|---|
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 2 h 25 m €63-91 BUD · 18 km | 2 h 30 m €88-160 SPU · 12 km |
| AmsterdamAMS | 2 h 5 m €175-230 1 stop BUD · 18 km | 2 h 10 m €186-201 1 stop SPU · 12 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 1 h 40 m €123-153 1 stop BUD · 18 km | 1 h 45 m €169-224 SPU · 12 km |
| RomeFCO, CIA | 1 h 40 m €52-62 BUD · 18 km | 1 h 5 m €294 SPU · 12 km |
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 2 h 10 m €97-114 BUD · 18 km | 2 h 5 m €169-225 SPU · 12 km |
| MunichMUC | 1 h 20 m €166-184 BUD · 18 km | 1 h 25 m no fares SPU · 12 km |
| CopenhagenCPH | 1 h 50 m €60-87 BUD · 18 km | 2 h 15 m €119-192 1 stop SPU · 12 km |
| MilanMXP, BGY, LIN | 1 h 40 m €42-56 BUD · 18 km | 1 h 25 m no fares SPU · 12 km |
| ViennaVIE | 55 m no fares BUD · 18 km | 1 h 15 m €233-281 SPU · 12 km |
| BerlinBER | 1 h 30 m €53-90 BUD · 18 km | 1 h 50 m €171-200 SPU · 12 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
| Measure | Budapest | Split |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | Hungarian | Croatian |
| Currency | Forint (HUF) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CF230 V, 50 Hz | CF230 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 112 |
| Elevation | 117 m | 0 m |
| Main airport | Budapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport (BUD)18 km from centre155 non-stop destinations | Split Saint Jerome Airport (SPU)12 km from centre70 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 13 days | 14 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Budapest | Split |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 1,685,209 | 160,577 |
| People per km² | 3,209 | – |
| Museums within 10 km | 81 | 11 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 1 | 4 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 86 | 31 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | – | 4 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Budapest or Split somewhere new.