VacationSelector

Cardiff or Zadar?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Cardiff
48
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife with your weighting.

Zadar
47
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and 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.

CardiffZadar
Beaches & swimming. Zadar leads by 27 points.27
CardiffZadar
Score4673
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km849
Coast distance2 km0 km
Water distance2 km0 km
Places to eat. Cardiff leads by 35 points.35
CardiffZadar
Score6025
Restaurants within 2 km of centre541143
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3211
Museums & heritage. Cardiff leads by 6 points.6
CardiffZadar
Score3933
Museums within 10 km618
Museums within 2 km of centre68
Share of museums within 2 km %10100
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Cardiff leads by 23 points.23
CardiffZadar
Score4825
Drinking venues within 4 km536194
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre395139
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7472
Nightclubs within 4 km354
Nature & day trips. Zadar leads by 5 points.5
CardiffZadar
Score5055
Protected land share 50 km %1812
Landscape blanket share 50 km %150
Land share of disc %6847
Park area within 2 km88 hectares30 hectares
Good for families. Cardiff leads by 1 points.1
CardiffZadar
Score3231
Tourist attractions within 2 km49
Park area within 2 km88 hectares30 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Cardiff leads by 14 points.14
CardiffZadar
Score4531
Notable places within 2 km5123
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Zadar leads by 26 points.26
CardiffZadar
Score5480
Price level global84.948.5
Daily budget€138
Year-round weather. Zadar leads by 15 points.15
CardiffZadar
Score5469
Monthly daytime high7.7 °C to 20.2 °C10.4 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm25 mm to 117 mm
Dry months02
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
Zadar
10
11
15
19
23
28
31
31
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Zadar
14
13
13
14
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Zadar
73
64
59
62
58
49
25
32
82
80
117
99
Daylight, hours per day
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Zadar
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cardiff
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Zadar
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). Zadar: 1999-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Zadar / Zemunik (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCardiffZadar
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 20 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
2 h 10 m
€186-201
1 stop
SPU · 107 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 30 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 5 m
€294
SPU · 107 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 5 m
€169-225
SPU · 107 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 55 m
€85-113
1 stop
BRS · 34 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
ZAD · 10 km
MunichMUC
1 h 55 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 35 m
€247-298
1 stop
SPU · 107 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 20 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
2 h 45 m
€123-165
1 stop
SPU · 107 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
PraguePRG
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 25 m
€95-155
1 stop
ZAD · 10 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 10 m
€45-192
ZAD · 10 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

MeasureCardiffZadar
Official languageEnglishCroatian
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 m5 m
Main airportCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinationsZadar Airport (ZAD)10 km from centre67 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCardiffZadar
City population383,53670,779
People per km²2,734
Museums within 10 km91
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre5517
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone4 months

Where else could you go?

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