VacationSelector

Cardiff or New York?

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 and value for money with your weighting.

New York
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife 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.

Scoreboard

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

CardiffNew York
Beaches & swimming. New York leads by 18 points.18
CardiffNew York
Score4664
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km817
Coast distance2 km1 km
Water distance2 km1 km
Places to eat. New York leads by 35 points.35
CardiffNew York
Score6095
Restaurants within 2 km of centre5416,032
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3238
Museums & heritage. New York leads by 21 points.21
CardiffNew York
Score3960
Museums within 10 km61119
Museums within 2 km of centre631
Share of museums within 2 km %1026
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. New York leads by 41 points.41
CardiffNew York
Score4889
Drinking venues within 4 km5364,159
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre3952,015
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7448
Nightclubs within 4 km35192
Nature & day trips. Cardiff leads by 11 points.11
CardiffNew York
Score5039
Protected land share 50 km %184
Landscape blanket share 50 km %150
Land share of disc %6869
Park area within 2 km88 hectares134 hectares
Good for families. New York leads by 40 points.40
CardiffNew York
Score3272
Tourist attractions within 2 km437
Park area within 2 km88 hectares134 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km27
Sights concentration. New York leads by 29 points.29
CardiffNew York
Score4574
Notable places within 2 km51268
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cardiff leads by 11 points.11
CardiffNew York
Score5443
Price level global84.9100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. New York leads by 4 points.4
CardiffNew York
Score5458
Monthly daytime high7.7 °C to 20.2 °C4.5 °C to 30.1 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm74 mm to 112 mm
Dry months00
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
New York
5
6
10
16
22
27
30
29
25
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
Rainfall, mm
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
Daylight, hours per day
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
New York
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cardiff
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
New York
No sunshine record

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). New York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCardiffNew York
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 10 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
1 h 20 m
€206-234
LGA · 13 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
7 h 25 m
€474-553
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 55 m
€85-113
1 stop
BRS · 34 km
8 h 15 m
€430-458
JFK · 21 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
8 h 5 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
GenevaGVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
7 h 30 m
€445-517
JFK · 21 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
6 h 40 m
€391-493
JFK · 21 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
New DelhiDEL
8 h 40 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
14 h 30 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
BridgetownBGI
8 h 25 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
JFK · 21 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

MeasureCardiffNew York
Official languageEnglish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999911
Elevation41 m25 m
Main airportCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinationsJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCardiffNew York
City population383,5368,804,190
People per km²2,7347,256
Museums within 10 km9157
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre55132
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone3 months

Where else could you go?

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