VacationSelector

Budapest or Warsaw?

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

Your match

Too close to call, level with your weighting

Budapest
60
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Warsaw
60
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

BudapestWarsaw
Beaches & swimming. Budapest and Warsaw are level on 0.
BudapestWarsaw
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km626
Coast distance10,000 km238 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Budapest leads by 5 points.5
BudapestWarsaw
Score7772
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,6991,222
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3534
Museums & heritage. Budapest leads by 1 points.1
BudapestWarsaw
Score6463
Museums within 10 km144107
Museums within 2 km of centre6460
Share of museums within 2 km %4456
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Budapest leads by 10 points.10
BudapestWarsaw
Score7262
Drinking venues within 4 km1,7651,005
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,168648
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6664
Nightclubs within 4 km97104
Nature & day trips. Warsaw leads by 15 points.15
BudapestWarsaw
Score4055
Protected land share 50 km %827
Landscape blanket share 50 km %019
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km111 hectares107 hectares
Good for families. Budapest leads by 1 points.1
BudapestWarsaw
Score7170
Tourist attractions within 2 km7542
Park area within 2 km111 hectares107 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km15
Sights concentration. Warsaw leads by 7 points.7
BudapestWarsaw
Score6976
Notable places within 2 km206299
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Budapest leads by 1 points.1
BudapestWarsaw
Score8079
Price level global4849
Daily budget€104€133
Year-round weather. Budapest leads by 5 points.5
BudapestWarsaw
Score6459
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 27.9 °C0.9 °C to 25.2 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 75 mm29 mm to 83 mm
Dry months56
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
Warsaw
1
3
7
15
20
23
25
25
19
13
7
2
Rainfall, mm
Budapest
29
27
30
37
67
67
75
60
48
41
48
39
Warsaw
31
29
29
36
56
63
83
63
50
40
36
37
Daylight, hours per day
Budapest
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Warsaw
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
Warsaw
1
2
5
8
9
11
11
10
8
5
2
1

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). Warsaw: 1991-2020 normals, Warszawa-Okecie (7.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBudapestWarsaw
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€63-91
BUD · 18 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 10 m
€97-114
BUD · 18 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 50 m
€87-214
BUD · 18 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 40 m
€42-56
BUD · 18 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 5 m
€175-230
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 40 m
€123-153
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 0 m
€58-94
BUD · 18 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 25 m
€276-394
2 stops
BUD · 18 km
5 h 35 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
9 h 5 m
no fares
BUD · 18 km
8 h 50 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 15 m
no fares
BUD · 18 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
WAW · 8 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

MeasureBudapestWarsaw
Official languageHungarianPolish
CurrencyForint (HUF)Zloty (PLN)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation117 m118 m
Main airportBudapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport (BUD)18 km from centre155 non-stop destinationsWarsaw Chopin Airport (WAW)8 km from centre170 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBudapestWarsaw
City population1,685,2091,862,402
People per km²3,2093,601
Museums within 10 km81117
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8676

Where else could you go?

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