VacationSelector

Cardiff or Dublin?

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

Your match

Cardiff
48
match

Wins on nature & day trips with your weighting.

Dublin
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on good for families 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.

The verdict

Choose Cardiff if the trip is built around getting out of the city: much of the surrounding land is protected, there is more park space near the centre, and the sea reaches 18°C in August.

Choose Dublin if you want a walking city: about three times as many notable places within reach of the centre, museums grouped close in, and more restaurants and drinking places around them.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

CardiffDublin
Beaches & swimming. Dublin leads by 3 points.3
CardiffDublin
Score4649
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km811
Coast distance2 km3 km
Water distance2 km3 km
Places to eat. Dublin leads by 10 points.10
CardiffDublin
Score6070
Restaurants within 2 km of centre541920
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3237
Museums & heritage. Dublin leads by 16 points.16
CardiffDublin
Score3955
Museums within 10 km6147
Museums within 2 km of centre637
Share of museums within 2 km %1079
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Dublin leads by 16 points.16
CardiffDublin
Score4864
Drinking venues within 4 km5361,239
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre395934
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7475
Nightclubs within 4 km3540
Nature & day trips. Cardiff leads by 24 points.24
CardiffDublin
Score5026
Protected land share 50 km %183
Landscape blanket share 50 km %150
Land share of disc %6862
Park area within 2 km88 hectares43 hectares
Good for families. Dublin leads by 22 points.22
CardiffDublin
Score3254
Tourist attractions within 2 km441
Park area within 2 km88 hectares43 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Dublin leads by 17 points.17
CardiffDublin
Score4562
Notable places within 2 km51141
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dublin leads by 3 points.3
CardiffDublin
Score5457
Price level global84.980.2
Daily budget—€187
Year-round weather. Cardiff and Dublin are level on 54.
CardiffDublin
Score5454
Monthly daytime high7.7 °C to 20.2 °C8.2 °C to 19.5 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm52 mm to 83 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Cardiff is the better base for time spent outside the city. 18% of the land around it is protected, against 3% around Dublin, and it has roughly twice as much park space near the centre. It also has 2 theme parks within reach against Dublin's 1.

Dublin packs more into walking distance: about three times as many notable places near the centre, and many times as many tourist attractions, which is what makes it the easier city to fill days in with children. Its museums also sit more tightly around the centre.

Where they are alike

Their weather works out much the same. Both run daytime highs of about 8-20°C, warmest in July and coldest in January, and neither has a month at 40mm of rain or less.

Swimming is a similar proposition in both. The sea is 2km from Cardiff's centre and 3km from Dublin's, with beaches within reach either way, but neither has a month of sea at 21°C or more.

Which traveller are you?

A weekend on foot: Dublin. Far more notable places sit within walking distance of the centre, the museums cluster close in, and there are more restaurants and drinking places to move between afterwards.

Walkers and day-trippers: Cardiff. With 18% of the surrounding land protected against 3% around Dublin, and about twice the park space near the centre, it is the one set up for going outwards.

Families: Dublin has many times more tourist attractions near the centre, which suits a short city trip. Cardiff answers with park space and 2 theme parks within reach, better if the days are outdoor-led.

What the numbers don't tell you

This dataset carries no daily cost figure for Cardiff, so the two cannot be compared on price at all, in either direction. The value ratings rest on a different measure that both cities do have, and reading them as a verdict on what a trip costs would be a mistake.

The beach figures flatter both. Sea 2km from Cardiff's centre and 3km from Dublin's tells you how fast you reach the water, not how it feels: neither passes 18°C. And the best-rated summer weeks still come with rain in every month, so they are not dry weeks.

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
Dublin
8
9
10
12
15
18
20
19
17
14
10
8
Sea temperature, °C
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Dublin
9
8
8
9
11
13
15
15
15
13
12
11
Rainfall, mm
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Dublin
62
52
52
55
58
65
62
74
61
78
83
72
Daylight, hours per day
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Dublin
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Cardiff
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Dublin
2
3
4
5
6
6
5
5
4
3
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). Dublin: 1991-2020 normals, Dublin Airport (9.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Cardiff is the stronger summer pick. June to August bring highs of 18-20°C, the sea peaks at 18°C in August, and rainfall sits at 56-66mm, drier than Dublin in June and August.

Dublin holds up better at the cold ends of the year. Its winter is drier, 62mm in January against Cardiff's 77mm and 72mm in December against 79mm. July highs match at 20°C, but the sea only reaches 15°C, and October and November are wet in both, at 78-83mm.

Getting there

Flying fromCardiffDublin
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 20 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
1 h 35 m
€80-139
DUB · 9 km
ArrecifeACE
3 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 35 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 35 m
€43-47
DUB · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 25 m
€71-105
DUB · 9 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 25 m
€66-101
1 stop
DUB · 9 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 10 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
6 h 50 m
€449-527
1 stop
DUB · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 15 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
7 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
CancunCUN
9 h 55 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
9 h 30 m
no fares
DUB · 9 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 2026-08 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

MeasureCardiffDublin
Official languageEnglishEnglish, Irish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation41 m20 m
Main airportCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinationsDublin Airport (DUB)9 km from centre201 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureCardiffDublin
City population383,536592,713
People per km²2,7345,154
Museums within 10 km940
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre5574
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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