VacationSelector

Cardiff or Valletta?

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 places to eat with your weighting.

Valletta
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

CardiffValletta
Beaches & swimming. Valletta leads by 31 points.31
CardiffValletta
Score4677
Swim season months06
Beaches 10 km822
Coast distance2 km0 km
Water distance2 km0 km
Places to eat. Cardiff leads by 2 points.2
CardiffValletta
Score6058
Restaurants within 2 km of centre541416
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3235
Museums & heritage. Valletta leads by 22 points.22
CardiffValletta
Score3961
Museums within 10 km6146
Museums within 2 km of centre629
Share of museums within 2 km %1063
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Cardiff leads by 1 points.1
CardiffValletta
Score4847
Drinking venues within 4 km536522
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre395250
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7448
Nightclubs within 4 km3527
Nature & day trips. Cardiff leads by 4 points.4
CardiffValletta
Score5046
Protected land share 50 km %18
Landscape blanket share 50 km %150
Land share of disc %686
Park area within 2 km88 hectares24 hectares
Good for families. Valletta leads by 14 points.14
CardiffValletta
Score3246
Tourist attractions within 2 km432
Park area within 2 km88 hectares24 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Valletta leads by 16 points.16
CardiffValletta
Score4561
Notable places within 2 km51133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Valletta leads by 15 points.15
CardiffValletta
Score5469
Price level global84.962.8
Daily budget€129
Year-round weather. Valletta leads by 25 points.25
CardiffValletta
Score5479
Monthly daytime high7.7 °C to 20.2 °C15.7 °C to 31.9 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm0 mm to 90 mm
Dry months06
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
Valletta
16
16
17
20
24
29
32
32
29
25
21
17
Sea temperature, °C
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Valletta
16
15
15
16
19
22
25
27
26
24
21
18
Rainfall, mm
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Valletta
80
72
39
19
10
5
0
10
63
74
90
85
Daylight, hours per day
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Valletta
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Cardiff
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Valletta
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
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). Valletta: 1991-2020 normals, Luqa (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCardiffValletta
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 30 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 30 m
€37-71
MLA · 6 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 55 m
€85-113
1 stop
BRS · 34 km
2 h 5 m
€62-92
MLA · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 45 m
€99-132
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
CataniaCTA
3 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
55 m
€42-83
MLA · 6 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 20 m
€206-246
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 5 m
€56-95
MLA · 6 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
ThessalonikiSKG
3 h 25 m
€95-154
BRS · 34 km
1 h 45 m
€122-197
MLA · 6 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 15 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
MLA · 6 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

MeasureCardiffValletta
Official languageEnglishEnglish, Maltese
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation41 m56 m
Main airportCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinationsMalta International Airport (MLA)6 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCardiffValletta
City population383,5366,444
People per km²2,7348,055
Museums within 10 km915
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre5555
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone6 months

Where else could you go?

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