VacationSelector

Dublin or Belfast?

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

Your match

Dublin
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration with your weighting.

Belfast
48
match

Wins on nature & day trips with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Belfast if the point of the trip is what lies outside the city: protected countryside on the doorstep, more park space near the centre and two theme parks within reach.

Choose Dublin if you want the city itself to be the trip, with about three times as many museums, far more notable places within walking distance of the centre, and more places to eat and drink.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

DublinBelfast
Beaches & swimming. Dublin leads by 1 points.1
DublinBelfast
Score4948
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1110
Coast distance3 km1 km
Water distance3 km1 km
Places to eat. Dublin leads by 14 points.14
DublinBelfast
Score7056
Restaurants within 2 km of centre920432
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3731
Museums & heritage. Dublin leads by 26 points.26
DublinBelfast
Score5529
Museums within 10 km4718
Museums within 2 km of centre376
Share of museums within 2 km %7933
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Dublin leads by 16 points.16
DublinBelfast
Score6448
Drinking venues within 4 km1,239550
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre934348
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7563
Nightclubs within 4 km4029
Nature & day trips. Belfast leads by 27 points.27
DublinBelfast
Score2653
Protected land share 50 km %319
Landscape blanket share 50 km %013
Land share of disc %6265
Park area within 2 km43 hectares68 hectares
Good for families. Dublin leads by 6 points.6
DublinBelfast
Score5448
Tourist attractions within 2 km4116
Park area within 2 km43 hectares68 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Dublin leads by 20 points.20
DublinBelfast
Score6242
Notable places within 2 km14143
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dublin leads by 3 points.3
DublinBelfast
Score5754
Price level global80.284.9
Daily budget€187—
Year-round weather. Dublin leads by 3 points.3
DublinBelfast
Score5451
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 19.5 °C6.9 °C to 19 °C
Monthly rainfall52 mm to 83 mm55 mm to 89 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Belfast is the better base for getting out of the city. 19% of the land around it is protected against 3% around Dublin, and it has about twice as much park space near the centre, so green space is part of the ordinary day rather than a trip in itself.

Dublin holds the advantage indoors and on foot: about three times as many museums as Belfast, clustered tightly around the centre, and about three times as many notable places within walking distance, so days need less planning.

Where they are alike

Both sit on the coast without being swimming destinations. The sea is 1km from Belfast's centre and 3km from Dublin's, and each has a similar spread of beaches within reach, but neither gets a month warm enough in the water for casual swimming.

Weather separates them little: highs run 7-19°C in Belfast and 8-20°C in Dublin, and both stay above 40mm of rain in every month. Families are served either way, and neither pulls clearly ahead on value.

Which traveller are you?

Walkers and day-trippers should take Belfast. 19% of the land around it is protected against 3% around Dublin, and there is more park space near the centre, so time outdoors does not have to be a whole-day excursion.

A city-break traveller who wants museums and short distances should take Dublin. It has about three times as many museums, sitting tightly around the centre, and far more notable places within walking distance, so days can be planned loosely.

Families could go either way. Dublin has many more attractions near the centre and more places to eat; Belfast offers more park space and 2 theme parks within reach against Dublin's 1, which favours warm months.

What the numbers don't tell you

There is no daily-budget figure for Belfast in this data, only for Dublin, where a day works out at about €187. The value ranking is built from something other than that figure, so it should not be read as saying which trip costs less: on cost, one side of the comparison is missing.

The beach figures also flatter both. Being close to the sea is not the same as swimming in it: the water peaks at 14°C in Belfast and 15°C in Dublin, so the coast is for walking. Belfast's outdoors advantage carries the same catch, since no month falls below 55mm.

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
Dublin
8
9
10
12
15
18
20
19
17
14
10
8
Belfast
7
8
10
12
15
18
19
19
17
13
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Dublin
9
8
8
9
11
13
15
15
15
13
12
11
Belfast
9
8
8
8
9
11
12
13
14
14
12
11
Rainfall, mm
Dublin
62
52
52
55
58
65
62
74
61
78
83
72
Belfast
74
62
60
56
55
65
74
86
67
89
87
85
Daylight, hours per day
Dublin
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Belfast
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Dublin
2
3
4
5
6
6
5
5
4
3
2
2
Belfast
2
2
3
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Dublin: 1991-2020 normals, Dublin Airport (9.3 km from centre). Belfast: 1991-2020 normals, Belfast / Aldergrove Airport (19.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Belfast is at its best from June to August, when highs reach 18-19°C, though rain builds again by August at 86mm. May is the drier alternative at 55mm and 15°C, better for a walking trip than late summer.

Dublin runs marginally warmer and drier through the same stretch, with July at 20°C and 62mm against Belfast's 74mm. Autumn and winter are wet in both, Belfast more so, and neither offers much warmth outside summer.

Getting there

Flying fromDublinBelfast
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 10 m
€33-43
DUB · 9 km
1 h 15 m
€72-142
BHD · 4 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
6 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 0 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 35 m
€80-139
DUB · 9 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
EdinburghEDI
1 h 5 m
€39-41
DUB · 9 km
55 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€43-47
DUB · 9 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
3 h 0 m
€135-197
BFS · 20 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
7 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 25 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
CancunCUN
9 h 30 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
9 h 30 m
no fares
DUB · 132 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

MeasureDublinBelfast
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
Elevation20 m3 m
Main airportDublin Airport (DUB)9 km from centre201 non-stop destinationsGeorge Best Belfast City Airport (BHD)4 km from centre24 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureDublinBelfast
City population592,713345,006
People per km²5,1543,000
Museums within 10 km408
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre7444
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Dublin or Belfast 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.