VacationSelector

Cape Town or Thessaloniki?

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, 2 points apart

Cape Town
57
match

Wins on places to eat and year-round weather with your weighting.

Thessaloniki
59
match

Wins on nature & day trips and nightlife 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.

Cape TownThessaloniki
Beaches & swimming. Cape Town leads by 5 points.5
Cape TownThessaloniki
Score6055
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km294
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Cape Town leads by 17 points.17
Cape TownThessaloniki
Score6750
Restaurants within 2 km of centre650640
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4215
Museums & heritage. Cape Town leads by 5 points.5
Cape TownThessaloniki
Score5449
Museums within 10 km2534
Museums within 2 km of centre2022
Share of museums within 2 km %8065
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Thessaloniki leads by 20 points.20
Cape TownThessaloniki
Score4767
Drinking venues within 4 km4831,407
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre389805
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8157
Nightclubs within 4 km4761
Nature & day trips. Thessaloniki leads by 29 points.29
Cape TownThessaloniki
Score3665
Protected land share 50 km %625
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4283
Park area within 2 km27 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Thessaloniki leads by 5 points.5
Cape TownThessaloniki
Score3641
Tourist attractions within 2 km1916
Park area within 2 km27 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Thessaloniki leads by 11 points.11
Cape TownThessaloniki
Score4556
Notable places within 2 km5198
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cape Town leads by 11 points.11
Cape TownThessaloniki
Score8574
Price level global40.555.8
Daily budget€125
Year-round weather. Cape Town leads by 14 points.14
Cape TownThessaloniki
Score8672
Monthly daytime high18 °C to 27.5 °C9.7 °C to 32.1 °C
Monthly rainfall10 mm to 97 mm21 mm to 56 mm
Dry months69
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
Cape Town
27
28
26
24
21
18
18
18
20
22
24
26
Thessaloniki
10
11
15
19
25
30
32
32
27
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Cape Town
18
18
17
16
15
15
15
15
15
15
16
17
Thessaloniki
14
13
13
15
19
23
26
27
25
21
18
15
Rainfall, mm
Cape Town
10
11
13
42
65
97
89
76
47
32
27
13
Thessaloniki
35
32
38
36
44
30
23
21
33
41
38
56
Daylight, hours per day
Cape Town
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Thessaloniki
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cape Town
12
10
9
8
6
6
6
7
8
9
10
11
Thessaloniki
4
4
6
6
9
11
11
10
8
6
4
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cape Town: 1991-2020 normals, Cape Town Airport (17.5 km from centre). Thessaloniki: 1991-2020 normals, Thessaloniki Airport (14 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCape TownThessaloniki
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
12 h 5 m
€634-815
CPT · 18 km
3 h 15 m
€95-156
SKG · 14 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 45 m
€632-724
1 stop
CPT · 18 km
2 h 30 m
€119-127
SKG · 14 km
MunichMUC
11 h 30 m
no fares
CPT · 18 km
2 h 10 m
€188-242
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
10 h 35 m
€717-799
1 stop
CPT · 18 km
1 h 15 m
€151-156
SKG · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
12 h 5 m
no fares
CPT · 18 km
2 h 55 m
€225-285
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
ZurichZRH
11 h 25 m
no fares
CPT · 18 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 40 m
€742-801
2 stops
CPT · 18 km
2 h 50 m
€98-154
1 stop
SKG · 14 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

MeasureCape TownThessaloniki
Official languageEnglish, Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, Venda, Northern Sotho, Swazi, Tswana, Tsonga, Sesotho, Southern Ndebele, South African Sign LanguageGreek
CurrencyRand (ZAR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCMN230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+2UTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation5 m6 m
Main airportCape Town International Airport (CPT)18 km from centre44 non-stop destinationsThessaloniki Macedonia International Airport (SKG)14 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureCape TownThessaloniki
City population3,776,313309,617
People per km²1,53816,042
Museums within 10 km2231
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre6545
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cape Town or Thessaloniki 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.