VacationSelector
Cardiff Castle, Cardiff
CardiffCardiff Castle
The steamboat Natchez on the Mississippi, New Orleans
New OrleansThe steamboat Natchez on the Mississippi

Photos: Cardiff by Tevfik Teker, CC BY 3.0, cropped; New Orleans by Bernard Spragg, CC0.

Cardiff or New Orleans?

Our verdict in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities, and the climate month by month, so you can choose for your trip.

Choose Cardiff for

  • nature and the outdoors
  • day trips
  • beaches

What lies behind each score is written up on Cardiff’s own page.

Choose New Orleans for

  • food and drink
  • nightlife
  • live music and the arts

What lies behind each score is written up on New Orleans’s own page.

Scoreboard

Twelve categories on one fixed scale from 0 to 100. The shaded stretch is the gap between the two.

Beaches & swimming. Cardiff 30, New Orleans 14: Cardiff leads by 16 points.
Food & drink. Cardiff 45, New Orleans 84: New Orleans leads by 39 points.
Culture & sights. Cardiff 58, New Orleans 67: New Orleans leads by 9 points.
Nightlife. Cardiff 50, New Orleans 85: New Orleans leads by 35 points.
Nature & outdoors. Cardiff 70, New Orleans 42: Cardiff leads by 28 points.
Day trips. Cardiff 72, New Orleans 52: Cardiff leads by 20 points.
Good for families. Cardiff 58, New Orleans 55: Cardiff leads by 3 points.
Getting around. Cardiff 66, New Orleans 55: Cardiff leads by 11 points.
Shopping & style. Cardiff 50, New Orleans 54: New Orleans leads by 4 points.
Affordability. Cardiff 46, New Orleans 40: Cardiff leads by 6 points.
Live music & performing arts. Cardiff 57, New Orleans 80: New Orleans leads by 23 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Cardiff 27, New Orleans 25: Cardiff leads by 2 points.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Cardiff and New Orleans.

Your match

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders, and both match scores follow your weighting.

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Cardiff
52match

Wins on nature and the outdoors and day trips with your weighting.

New Orleans
54match

Wins on food and drink and nightlife with your weighting.

What matters to you?

When should you go?

Pick your month. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Cardiff in July

20 °Cdaytime high
13 °Cnight-time low
83 mmrain in the month
7 hsunshine a day
17 °Csea
16 hdaylight a day

New Orleans in July

33 °Cdaytime high
24 °Cnight-time low
169 mmrain in the month
No recordsunshine a day
30 °Csea
14 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

050100150200JFMAMJJASOND
CardiffNew Orleans

Where the figures come from

Cardiff has no rain gauge within 25 km of the centre, so its rainfall comes from a gridded climate dataset read at the city rather than from a gauge further away.

Cardiff's sunshine is measured 83 km from the centre, at Lyneham.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cardiff: 1991-2020 normals, Cardiff-Wales Airport (14.9 km from centre). New Orleans: 1991-2020 normals, New Orleans Airport (2.7 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureCardiffNew Orleans
Official languageEnglish-
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC-6, UTC-5 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999911
Elevation41 m-2 m
Main airportCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre30 non-stop destinationsLouis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY)18 km from centre51 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCardiffNew Orleans
City population383,536383,997
People per km²2,734423
Museums within 10 km916
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone7 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cardiff or New Orleans somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Rainfall where no rain gauge is within 25 km is from the TerraClimate 1991-2020 climatology (Abatzoglou et al. 2018, Scientific Data), read at the city. 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. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-10-31. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.