VacationSelector

Cardiff or Rovaniemi?

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 beaches & swimming and nightlife with your weighting.

Rovaniemi
23
match

Wins on value for money 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.

CardiffRovaniemi
Beaches & swimming. Cardiff leads by 46 points.46
CardiffRovaniemi
Score460
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km813
Coast distance2 km99 km
Water distance2 km
Places to eat. Cardiff leads by 39 points.39
CardiffRovaniemi
Score6021
Restaurants within 2 km of centre54180
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3214
Museums & heritage. Cardiff leads by 19 points.19
CardiffRovaniemi
Score3920
Museums within 10 km618
Museums within 2 km of centre67
Share of museums within 2 km %1088
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Cardiff leads by 44 points.44
CardiffRovaniemi
Score484
Drinking venues within 4 km53652
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre39542
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7481
Nightclubs within 4 km353
Nature & day trips. Cardiff leads by 34 points.34
CardiffRovaniemi
Score5016
Protected land share 50 km %182
Landscape blanket share 50 km %150
Land share of disc %68100
Park area within 2 km88 hectares25 hectares
Good for families. Cardiff leads by 11 points.11
CardiffRovaniemi
Score3221
Tourist attractions within 2 km42
Park area within 2 km88 hectares25 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Cardiff leads by 20 points.20
CardiffRovaniemi
Score4525
Notable places within 2 km5117
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rovaniemi leads by 2 points.2
CardiffRovaniemi
Score5456
Price level global84.981.6
Daily budget€184
Year-round weather. Cardiff leads by 11 points.11
CardiffRovaniemi
Score5443
Monthly daytime high7.7 °C to 20.2 °C-7.9 °C to 20.9 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm30 mm to 75 mm
Dry months05
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
Rovaniemi
-8
-6
-1
5
13
18
21
18
13
4
0
-4
Sea temperature, °C
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Rovaniemi
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Rovaniemi
37
32
33
30
37
69
75
63
50
50
48
41
Daylight, hours per day
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Rovaniemi
4
8
12
15
20
24
22
17
13
10
6
3
Sunshine, hours per day
Cardiff
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Rovaniemi
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). Rovaniemi: 2008-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Rovaniemi Rautatieasema / Kuusela (0.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCardiffRovaniemi
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
RVN · 8 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
RVN · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 55 m
€85-113
1 stop
BRS · 34 km
3 h 40 m
no fares
RVN · 8 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 20 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
RVN · 8 km
GenevaGVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
3 h 40 m
no fares
RVN · 8 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
RVN · 8 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
4 h 25 m
no fares
RVN · 8 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
RVN · 8 km
BerlinBER
2 h 0 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
RVN · 8 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
RVN · 8 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

MeasureCardiffRovaniemi
Official languageEnglishFinnish, Swedish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation41 m88 m
Main airportCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinationsRovaniemi Airport (RVN)8 km from centre43 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureCardiffRovaniemi
City population383,53665,329
People per km²2,7349
Museums within 10 km96
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre5516
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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