VacationSelector

Cardiff or Dresden?

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

Cardiff
48
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Dresden
48
match

Wins on good for families 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.

CardiffDresden
Beaches & swimming. Cardiff leads by 46 points.46
CardiffDresden
Score460
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km822
Coast distance2 km267 km
Water distance2 km
Places to eat. Dresden leads by 1 points.1
CardiffDresden
Score6061
Restaurants within 2 km of centre541422
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3242
Museums & heritage. Dresden leads by 15 points.15
CardiffDresden
Score3954
Museums within 10 km6166
Museums within 2 km of centre634
Share of museums within 2 km %1052
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Cardiff leads by 6 points.6
CardiffDresden
Score4842
Drinking venues within 4 km536359
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre395265
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7474
Nightclubs within 4 km3543
Nature & day trips. Cardiff leads by 11 points.11
CardiffDresden
Score5039
Protected land share 50 km %1814
Landscape blanket share 50 km %159
Land share of disc %68100
Park area within 2 km88 hectares80 hectares
Good for families. Dresden leads by 27 points.27
CardiffDresden
Score3259
Tourist attractions within 2 km432
Park area within 2 km88 hectares80 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Dresden leads by 8 points.8
CardiffDresden
Score4553
Notable places within 2 km5182
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dresden leads by 6 points.6
CardiffDresden
Score5460
Price level global84.975.9
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Dresden leads by 8 points.8
CardiffDresden
Score5462
Monthly daytime high7.7 °C to 20.2 °C4 °C to 26.2 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm31 mm to 83 mm
Dry months04
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
Cardiff
8
8
10
13
16
18
20
20
18
14
11
9
Dresden
4
6
10
17
21
24
26
26
21
15
9
6
Sea temperature, °C
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Dresden
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Dresden
46
31
36
36
64
72
80
83
55
49
40
45
Daylight, hours per day
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Dresden
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Cardiff
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Dresden
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
7
6
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cardiff: 1991-2020 normals, Cardiff-Wales Airport (14.9 km from centre). Dresden: 1991-2020 normals, Dresden-Strehlen (3.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCardiffDresden
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 55 m
€85-113
1 stop
BRS · 34 km
1 h 25 m
€57-79
PRG · 112 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 20 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
1 h 30 m
€163-247
PRG · 112 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 40 m
€86-113
PRG · 112 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 15 m
€111-155
PRG · 112 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 30 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 45 m
€62-97
PRG · 112 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 45 m
€146-195
1 stop
PRG · 112 km
AntalyaAYT
4 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
3 h 5 m
€318-375
1 stop
DRS · 10 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
PRG · 112 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 10 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
PRG · 112 km
Punta CanaPUJ
8 h 40 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
PRG · 112 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 2026-09, 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

MeasureCardiffDresden
Official languageEnglishGerman
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation41 m126 m
Main airportCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinationsDresden Airport (DRS)10 km from centre12 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureCardiffDresden
City population383,536564,904
People per km²2,7341,720
Museums within 10 km970
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre5577
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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