VacationSelector

Cardiff or Valencia?

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

Your match

Cardiff
48
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

Valencia
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on year-round weather and nightlife 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.

CardiffValencia
Beaches & swimming. Valencia leads by 21 points.21
CardiffValencia
Score4667
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km812
Coast distance2 km3 km
Water distance2 km3 km
Places to eat. Valencia leads by 18 points.18
CardiffValencia
Score6078
Restaurants within 2 km of centre5411,995
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3233
Museums & heritage. Valencia leads by 16 points.16
CardiffValencia
Score3955
Museums within 10 km6159
Museums within 2 km of centre626
Share of museums within 2 km %1044
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Valencia leads by 22 points.22
CardiffValencia
Score4870
Drinking venues within 4 km5361,513
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre395957
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7463
Nightclubs within 4 km35108
Nature & day trips. Valencia leads by 3 points.3
CardiffValencia
Score5053
Protected land share 50 km %1810
Landscape blanket share 50 km %150
Land share of disc %6864
Park area within 2 km88 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Valencia leads by 10 points.10
CardiffValencia
Score3242
Tourist attractions within 2 km412
Park area within 2 km88 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Valencia leads by 7 points.7
CardiffValencia
Score4552
Notable places within 2 km5178
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Valencia leads by 17 points.17
CardiffValencia
Score5471
Price level global84.960.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Valencia leads by 30 points.30
CardiffValencia
Score5484
Monthly daytime high7.7 °C to 20.2 °C16.8 °C to 30.6 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm7 mm to 70 mm
Dry months08
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
Valencia
17
17
19
21
24
28
30
31
28
25
20
17
Sea temperature, °C
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Valencia
14
14
14
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Valencia
38
30
40
33
36
26
7
15
70
66
52
48
Daylight, hours per day
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Valencia
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
Valencia
6
6
7
8
9
9
10
10
8
7
6
5

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). Valencia: 1991-2020 normals, Valencia (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCardiffValencia
PalmaPMI
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 0 m
€32-53
VLC · 9 km
IbizaIBZ
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
50 m
no fares
VLC · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 55 m
€103-131
VLC · 9 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 55 m
€85-113
1 stop
BRS · 34 km
1 h 50 m
€51-87
VLC · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 20 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
2 h 25 m
€155-178
VLC · 9 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 0 m
€69-81
VLC · 9 km
Las PalmasLPA
4 h 0 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
VLC · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 30 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 0 m
€70-117
VLC · 9 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 0 m
€151-206
1 stop
VLC · 9 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 0 m
€72-115
VLC · 9 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

MeasureCardiffValencia
Official languageEnglishSpanish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation41 m15 m
Main airportCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinationsValencia Airport (VLC)9 km from centre107 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCardiffValencia
City population383,536840,792
People per km²2,7346,242
Museums within 10 km946
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre5592
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

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