VacationSelector

Cardiff or Ghent?

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

Cardiff
48
match

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

Ghent
50
match

Wins on museums & heritage and good for families 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 coast at hand, with the sea 2km from the centre, and open, protected country within easy reach for walking days.

Choose Ghent if the trip is about museums, UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, a wider range of kitchens and plenty for children to do on foot from the centre.

Scoreboard

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

CardiffGhent
Beaches & swimming. Cardiff leads by 20 points.20
CardiffGhent
Score4626
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km88
Coast distance2 km32 km
Water distance2 km32 km
Places to eat. Ghent leads by 10 points.10
CardiffGhent
Score6070
Restaurants within 2 km of centre541764
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3249
Museums & heritage. Ghent leads by 19 points.19
CardiffGhent
Score3958
Museums within 10 km6124
Museums within 2 km of centre620
Share of museums within 2 km %1083
Unesco sites within 50 km15
Nightlife. Ghent leads by 1 points.1
CardiffGhent
Score4849
Drinking venues within 4 km536570
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre395446
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7478
Nightclubs within 4 km3526
Nature & day trips. Cardiff leads by 16 points.16
CardiffGhent
Score5034
Protected land share 50 km %187
Landscape blanket share 50 km %154
Land share of disc %6887
Park area within 2 km88 hectares84 hectares
Good for families. Ghent leads by 18 points.18
CardiffGhent
Score3250
Tourist attractions within 2 km419
Park area within 2 km88 hectares84 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Ghent leads by 1 points.1
CardiffGhent
Score4546
Notable places within 2 km5155
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Ghent leads by 6 points.6
CardiffGhent
Score5460
Price level global84.976.2
Daily budget—€180
Year-round weather. Ghent leads by 2 points.2
CardiffGhent
Score5456
Monthly daytime high7.7 °C to 20.2 °C6.4 °C to 22 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm35 mm to 79 mm
Dry months01
0255075100

Where they differ

Cardiff puts the sea 2km from its centre, where Ghent's nearest coast is 32km out; both count 8 beaches nearby. Open country comes faster too: 18% of the land around Cardiff is protected against 7% around Ghent.

Ghent's heritage carries further: 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Cardiff's 1, with its museums grouped tightly around the centre. It also has many times as many tourist attractions near the centre, which matters with children, and a wider range of kitchens to eat from.

Where they are alike

Nights out look much alike. The two have about the same number of places to drink, Cardiff a few more nightclubs, and in both cases most sit near the centre, so an evening needs no transport.

Sightseeing works the same way: both hold a similar number of notable places within walking distance of the centre. The weather is close as well, Cardiff at 8-20°C across the year and Ghent at 6-22°C, and neither sea reaches 21°C in any month.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone who wants the coast should take Cardiff: the sea sits 2km from the centre, 8 beaches are within range, and the surrounding country is largely protected, which makes walking days easy to plan.

Travellers here for museums and old buildings will do better in Ghent, with UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach and museums clustered tightly enough to cover several on foot in a morning.

Families with young children lean to Ghent, where attractions near the centre far outnumber Cardiff's and are walkable; Cardiff's counter is 2 theme parks within reach against Ghent's 1, plus comparable park space.

What the numbers don't tell you

The dataset carries no cost figure for Cardiff, so nothing here supports a price comparison between the two, in either direction. The value standing rests on a different measure both cities do have, and should not be read as what a day will cost in Cardiff.

Cardiff's coastal lead is about proximity, not swimming: the water peaks at 18°C and never reaches 21°C in any month, so the beaches are for walking as much as bathing. The wettest months sit just after summer, which shortens the usable window further.

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
Ghent
6
7
10
13
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Ghent
6
6
6
9
12
16
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Ghent
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Daylight, hours per day
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Ghent
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
Ghent
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
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). Ghent: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (44.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Cardiff is at its best in July and August, with highs of 20°C and the sea at its warmest, 18°C. Midsummer rain is moderate here, 61-66mm, less than Ghent gets, though the autumn turns wet quickly.

Ghent has the longer season. April is the driest month either city sees, at 35mm, and highs climb from there to 22°C in August; the trade-off is that midsummer is Ghent's wettest stretch, up to 79mm. Spring suits it best.

Getting there

Flying fromCardiffGhent
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 56 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 56 km
GenevaGVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
AntalyaAYT
4 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
3 h 45 m
€179-232
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 55 m
€85-113
1 stop
BRS · 34 km
1 h 25 m
€36-101
BRU · 56 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 30 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 15 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 10 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 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

MeasureCardiffGhent
Official languageEnglishFrench, German, Dutch
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation41 m12 m
Main airportCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinationsBrussels Airport (BRU)56 km from centre191 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCardiffGhent
City population383,536272,657
People per km²2,7341,728
Museums within 10 km930
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km15
Distinct cuisines in the centre5583
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 Ghent 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.