VacationSelector

Cork or Edinburgh?

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

Your match

Cork
38
match

Wins on nature & day trips and value for money with your weighting.

Edinburgh
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on good for families and sights concentration 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.

CorkEdinburgh
Beaches & swimming. Edinburgh leads by 27 points.27
CorkEdinburgh
Score2855
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km120
Coast distance3 km3 km
Water distance3 km3 km
Places to eat. Edinburgh leads by 20 points.20
CorkEdinburgh
Score5070
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2241,023
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3535
Museums & heritage. Edinburgh leads by 34 points.34
CorkEdinburgh
Score2357
Museums within 10 km1030
Museums within 2 km of centre822
Share of museums within 2 km %8073
Unesco sites within 50 km03
Nightlife. Edinburgh leads by 26 points.26
CorkEdinburgh
Score3864
Drinking venues within 4 km3611,193
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre292884
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8174
Nightclubs within 4 km965
Nature & day trips. Cork leads by 17 points.17
CorkEdinburgh
Score5235
Protected land share 50 km %2
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %7485
Park area within 2 km48 hectares166 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 45 points.45
CorkEdinburgh
Score2772
Tourist attractions within 2 km787
Park area within 2 km48 hectares166 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Edinburgh leads by 38 points.38
CorkEdinburgh
Score2260
Notable places within 2 km14126
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cork leads by 3 points.3
CorkEdinburgh
Score5754
Price level global80.284.9
Daily budget€187
Year-round weather. Edinburgh leads by 2 points.2
CorkEdinburgh
Score4951
Monthly daytime high8.3 °C to 18.6 °C6.6 °C to 18.8 °C
Monthly rainfall78 mm to 140 mm43 mm to 80 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
Cork
8
9
10
12
15
17
19
19
17
13
10
9
Edinburgh
7
7
9
12
14
17
19
19
17
13
9
7
Sea temperature, °C
Cork
10
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
14
12
11
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Rainfall, mm
Cork
132
100
92
85
78
88
86
98
91
140
125
134
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Daylight, hours per day
Cork
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Cork
2
2
4
5
6
6
5
5
4
3
2
2
Edinburgh
2
3
4
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cork: 1991-2020 normals, Cork Airport (5.6 km from centre). Edinburgh: 1991-2020 normals, Edinburgh Airport (10 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCorkEdinburgh
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
1 h 20 m
€41-45
EDI · 11 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 45 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
1 h 25 m
€117-158
EDI · 11 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 94 km
6 h 50 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 40 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 35 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
ArrecifeACE
3 h 40 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
4 h 20 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
1 h 40 m
€78-108
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
3 h 55 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
4 h 30 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 78 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
FaroFAO
2 h 35 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
EDI · 11 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 2026-08 to 2026-10, 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

MeasureCorkEdinburgh
Official languageEnglish, IrishEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation0 m47 m
Main airportCork International Airport (ORK)7 km from centre46 non-stop destinationsEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureCorkEdinburgh
City population222,333488,050
People per km²5,9611,884
Museums within 10 km532
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km03
Distinct cuisines in the centre4978
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cork or Edinburgh 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.