VacationSelector

Calgary or Cardiff?

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

Your match

Calgary
38
match

Wins on good for families and places to eat with your weighting.

Cardiff
✓ Best match
48
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage 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.

CalgaryCardiff
Beaches & swimming. Cardiff leads by 46 points.46
CalgaryCardiff
Score046
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km48
Coast distance649 km2 km
Water distance2 km
Places to eat. Calgary leads by 6 points.6
CalgaryCardiff
Score6660
Restaurants within 2 km of centre749541
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3632
Museums & heritage. Cardiff leads by 30 points.30
CalgaryCardiff
Score939
Museums within 10 km861
Museums within 2 km of centre36
Share of museums within 2 km %3810
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Cardiff leads by 4 points.4
CalgaryCardiff
Score4448
Drinking venues within 4 km465536
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre343395
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7474
Nightclubs within 4 km1935
Nature & day trips. Cardiff leads by 14 points.14
CalgaryCardiff
Score3650
Protected land share 50 km %418
Landscape blanket share 50 km %015
Land share of disc %10068
Park area within 2 km142 hectares88 hectares
Good for families. Calgary leads by 9 points.9
CalgaryCardiff
Score4132
Tourist attractions within 2 km34
Park area within 2 km142 hectares88 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km52
Sights concentration. Cardiff leads by 6 points.6
CalgaryCardiff
Score3945
Notable places within 2 km3751
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Calgary and Cardiff are level on 54.
CalgaryCardiff
Score5454
Price level global8484.9
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Calgary leads by 3 points.3
CalgaryCardiff
Score5754
Monthly daytime high-0.7 °C to 24.8 °C7.7 °C to 20.2 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 106 mm49 mm to 87 mm
Dry months80
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
Calgary
0
-1
4
11
16
20
25
23
19
12
4
0
Cardiff
8
8
10
13
16
18
20
20
18
14
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Calgary
No coastline within reach
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Rainfall, mm
Calgary
9
13
19
28
58
106
44
47
33
21
17
17
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Daylight, hours per day
Calgary
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Calgary
No sunshine record
Cardiff
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Calgary: 1991-2020 normals, Calgary Int'l CS (8.2 km from centre). Cardiff: 1991-2020 normals, Cardiff-Wales Airport (14.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCalgaryCardiff
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 50 m
€182-359
1 stop
YYC · 9 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
ZurichZRH
9 h 50 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
BarcelonaBCN
10 h 5 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
DublinDUB
8 h 25 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
AmsterdamAMS
9 h 5 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
9 h 30 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
9 h 20 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
EdinburghEDI
8 h 20 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
RomeFCO, CIA
10 h 35 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
Punta CanaPUJ
7 h 0 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
8 h 40 m
no fares
BHX · 146 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

MeasureCalgaryCardiff
Official languageFrench, EnglishEnglish
CurrencyCanadian Dollar (CAD)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-7, UTC-6 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number911112 or 999
Elevation1,045 m41 m
Main airportCalgary International Airport (YYC)9 km from centre106 non-stop destinationsCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureCalgaryCardiff
City population1,306,784383,536
People per km²1,5832,734
Museums within 10 km139
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre6755
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Calgary or Cardiff 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). 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.