VacationSelector

Cardiff or Galway?

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

Your match

Cardiff
✓ Best match
48
match

Wins on places to eat and sights concentration with your weighting.

Galway
39
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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 you want the fuller city: more places to eat, more places to drink, and more to see within walking distance of the centre, with museums and heritage for wet days.

Choose Galway if the coast is the point. The sea is 1km from the centre, with 13 beaches nearby, and the trip leans towards nature and days out rather than city attractions.

Scoreboard

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

CardiffGalway
Beaches & swimming. Galway leads by 5 points.5
CardiffGalway
Score4651
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km813
Coast distance2 km1 km
Water distance2 km1 km
Places to eat. Cardiff leads by 23 points.23
CardiffGalway
Score6037
Restaurants within 2 km of centre541173
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3220
Museums & heritage. Cardiff leads by 19 points.19
CardiffGalway
Score3920
Museums within 10 km615
Museums within 2 km of centre65
Share of museums within 2 km %10100
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Cardiff leads by 22 points.22
CardiffGalway
Score4826
Drinking venues within 4 km536185
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre395153
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7483
Nightclubs within 4 km358
Nature & day trips. Galway leads by 5 points.5
CardiffGalway
Score5055
Protected land share 50 km %18—
Landscape blanket share 50 km %150
Land share of disc %6885
Park area within 2 km88 hectares65 hectares
Good for families. Cardiff leads by 7 points.7
CardiffGalway
Score3225
Tourist attractions within 2 km45
Park area within 2 km88 hectares65 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Cardiff leads by 23 points.23
CardiffGalway
Score4522
Notable places within 2 km5114
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Galway leads by 3 points.3
CardiffGalway
Score5457
Price level global84.980.2
Daily budget—€187
Year-round weather. Cardiff and Galway are level on 54.
CardiffGalway
Score5454
Monthly daytime high7.7 °C to 20.2 °C8.9 °C to 19.6 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm63 mm to 113 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Cardiff has about three times as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens, about three times as many places to drink plus far more nightclubs, and about three times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, so a day on foot goes further. Its museums outnumber Galway's many times over, with 1 UNESCO-listed place within day-trip reach.

Galway's advantage is the coast and the country around it: the sea sits 1km from the centre, with 13 beaches nearby against Cardiff's 8.

Where they are alike

Weather is where they are nearly identical. Cardiff runs marginally warmer, 8-20°C across the year against Galway's 9-20°C, but both are mild rather than hot, and neither has a month at 40mm of rain or less.

They are close on nature and days out, with park space near the centre in both, and on family appeal, which is modest either way: Galway has more attractions in the centre, Cardiff has 2 theme parks within reach.

Which traveller are you?

A weekend city traveller is better served by Cardiff: many times more museums, a UNESCO-listed place within day-trip reach, and enough notable sites packed near the centre that two days need little transport.

Someone whose trip is built around the water should take Galway. The sea is 1km from the centre and there are 13 beaches nearby, though it peaks at 16°C, so swimming is brief.

Families are thinly served in both. Cardiff has 2 theme parks within reach and more park space near the centre; Galway answers with more tourist attractions close to the centre.

What the numbers don't tell you

No cost comparison is possible here. The dataset carries a daily budget for Galway but none for Cardiff, so nothing in these figures tells you which is the cheaper trip; the value axis rests on a separate measure both cities have, not on what a day actually costs.

Galway's beach advantage is one of count and proximity rather than swimming: the sea peaks at 16°C, and rain runs above 100mm in several autumn and winter months, so a coast-led trip may mean beaches walked rather than swum. Neither city has a month at 40mm or less.

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
Galway
9
10
11
14
16
19
20
19
18
14
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Galway
9
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
15
14
12
10
Rainfall, mm
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Galway
100
87
76
63
63
72
76
89
77
101
104
113
Daylight, hours per day
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Galway
8
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
Galway
2
2
4
5
6
5
4
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). Galway: 1991-2020 normals, Shannon Airport (64.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Cardiff is at its best in July and August, when highs reach 20°C and the sea gets to 18°C, with rain around 61mm. It is also the drier of the two through autumn and winter, near 87mm in October where Galway runs above 100mm.

Galway is a better bet in late spring, when May brings its lightest rain at 63mm. Midsummer is warm but wetter, and the sea stops short of Cardiff's, peaking at 16°C.

Getting there

Flying fromCardiffGalway
ArrecifeACE
3 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
Puerto del RosarioFUE
3 h 50 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
ReusREU
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 25 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 35 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
FaroFAO
2 h 35 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
Las PalmasLPA
4 h 0 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
WroclawWRO
2 h 15 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 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.

Before you go

MeasureCardiffGalway
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 m25 m
Main airportCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinationsShannon Airport (SNN)64 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureCardiffGalway
City population383,53683,456
People per km²2,7341,563
Museums within 10 km94
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre5525
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 Galway 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.