VacationSelector

Dresden or Edinburgh?

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

Your match

Dresden
48
match

Wins on year-round weather and value for money with your weighting.

Edinburgh
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

DresdenEdinburgh
Beaches & swimming. Edinburgh leads by 55 points.55
DresdenEdinburgh
Score055
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km2220
Coast distance267 km3 km
Water distance3 km
Places to eat. Edinburgh leads by 9 points.9
DresdenEdinburgh
Score6170
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4221,023
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4235
Museums & heritage. Edinburgh leads by 3 points.3
DresdenEdinburgh
Score5457
Museums within 10 km6630
Museums within 2 km of centre3422
Share of museums within 2 km %5273
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Edinburgh leads by 22 points.22
DresdenEdinburgh
Score4264
Drinking venues within 4 km3591,193
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre265884
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7474
Nightclubs within 4 km4365
Nature & day trips. Dresden leads by 4 points.4
DresdenEdinburgh
Score3935
Protected land share 50 km %142
Landscape blanket share 50 km %91
Land share of disc %10085
Park area within 2 km80 hectares166 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 13 points.13
DresdenEdinburgh
Score5972
Tourist attractions within 2 km3287
Park area within 2 km80 hectares166 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Edinburgh leads by 7 points.7
DresdenEdinburgh
Score5360
Notable places within 2 km82126
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dresden leads by 6 points.6
DresdenEdinburgh
Score6054
Price level global75.984.9
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Dresden leads by 11 points.11
DresdenEdinburgh
Score6251
Monthly daytime high4 °C to 26.2 °C6.6 °C to 18.8 °C
Monthly rainfall31 mm to 83 mm43 mm to 80 mm
Dry months40
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
Dresden
4
6
10
17
21
24
26
26
21
15
9
6
Edinburgh
7
7
9
12
14
17
19
19
17
13
9
7
Sea temperature, °C
Dresden
No coastline within reach
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Rainfall, mm
Dresden
46
31
36
36
64
72
80
83
55
49
40
45
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Daylight, hours per day
Dresden
9
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
Dresden
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
7
6
4
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. Dresden: 1991-2020 normals, Dresden-Strehlen (3.8 km from centre). Edinburgh: 1991-2020 normals, Edinburgh Airport (10 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDresdenEdinburgh
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€86-113
PRG · 112 km
1 h 40 m
€78-108
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 25 m
€57-79
PRG · 112 km
2 h 20 m
€75-101
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
€163-247
PRG · 112 km
1 h 25 m
€117-158
EDI · 11 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 45 m
€62-97
PRG · 112 km
2 h 55 m
€99-141
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 15 m
€111-155
PRG · 112 km
2 h 40 m
€58-103
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€118-136
PRG · 112 km
4 h 0 m
€201-242
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
MadridMAD
2 h 45 m
€146-195
1 stop
PRG · 112 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€737
BER · 147 km
6 h 50 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 25 m
€66-91
PRG · 112 km
1 h 50 m
€55-94
EDI · 11 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 55 m
no fares
PRG · 112 km
3 h 55 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

MeasureDresdenEdinburgh
Official languageGermanEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation126 m47 m
Main airportDresden Airport (DRS)10 km from centre12 non-stop destinationsEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureDresdenEdinburgh
City population564,904488,050
People per km²1,7201,884
Museums within 10 km7032
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre7778
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Dresden 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. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.