VacationSelector

Dublin or Glasgow?

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 beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Glasgow
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 Dublin if you want the city itself to carry the trip: notable sights and museums packed within walking distance, about three times as many attractions near the centre, and 11 beaches close by.

Choose Glasgow if the surroundings matter more, with 16% of the land around it protected and more park space near the centre, and if you accept wetter, cooler months in return.

Scoreboard

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

DublinGlasgow
Beaches & swimming. Dublin leads by 13 points.13
DublinGlasgow
Score4936
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km113
Coast distance3 km3 km
Water distance3 km3 km
Places to eat. Dublin leads by 7 points.7
DublinGlasgow
Score7063
Restaurants within 2 km of centre920740
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3729
Museums & heritage. Dublin leads by 10 points.10
DublinGlasgow
Score5545
Museums within 10 km4732
Museums within 2 km of centre3713
Share of museums within 2 km %7941
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Dublin leads by 1 points.1
DublinGlasgow
Score6463
Drinking venues within 4 km1,2391,078
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre934654
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7561
Nightclubs within 4 km4073
Nature & day trips. Glasgow leads by 12 points.12
DublinGlasgow
Score2638
Protected land share 50 km %316
Landscape blanket share 50 km %012
Land share of disc %6291
Park area within 2 km43 hectares56 hectares
Good for families. Dublin leads by 13 points.13
DublinGlasgow
Score5441
Tourist attractions within 2 km4113
Park area within 2 km43 hectares56 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Dublin leads by 9 points.9
DublinGlasgow
Score6253
Notable places within 2 km14180
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dublin leads by 3 points.3
DublinGlasgow
Score5754
Price level global80.284.9
Daily budget€187—
Year-round weather. Dublin leads by 11 points.11
DublinGlasgow
Score5443
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 19.5 °C6.6 °C to 18.9 °C
Monthly rainfall52 mm to 83 mm102 mm to 207 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

The sea is 3km from both centres, but Dublin has 11 beaches within reach against Glasgow's 3, so a swim or a coast walk is easier to arrange. For families, Dublin has about three times as many attractions near the centre, though both have 1 theme park within reach.

Around Glasgow, 16% of the land is protected against 3% around Dublin, and there is more park space near the centre, so days spent out of the city are the stronger part of the trip.

Where they are alike

Nights out work much the same way in both: a comparable number of places to drink, most of them near the centre, so an evening needs little planning. Glasgow has about twice as many nightclubs.

They are also close on eating out and on value. Dublin has somewhat more restaurants near the centre and a slightly wider range of kitchens, but in both the choice is broad rather than limiting.

Which traveller are you?

Families with children: Dublin. Attractions near the centre number about three times Glasgow's, the notable sights cluster within walking distance, and 11 beaches sit close to the city for a change of pace.

Walkers and day-trippers: Glasgow. 16% of the surrounding land is protected against 3% around Dublin, and there is more park space near the centre, so time outside the city is easier to fill.

Eating and nights out: either works. Dublin has somewhat more restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens; Glasgow answers with about twice as many nightclubs, and both keep their drinking places central.

What the numbers don't tell you

This data carries no daily cost figure for Glasgow, only for Dublin, at €187 a day. The two therefore cannot be compared on price at all; the value ranking rests on a different measure that both cities have, not on what a day actually costs.

The beach lead flatters Dublin. The sea is 3km from both centres and peaks at 15°C in each, so swimming is brief rather than a reason to travel. Neither city has a month at 40mm of rain or less, so wet days are possible in any season.

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
Glasgow
7
7
9
12
15
18
19
19
16
13
9
7
Sea temperature, °C
Dublin
9
8
8
9
11
13
15
15
15
13
12
11
Glasgow
8
7
7
8
10
13
15
15
14
12
11
9
Rainfall, mm
Dublin
62
52
52
55
58
65
62
74
61
78
83
72
Glasgow
207
170
147
102
103
111
129
145
132
185
190
205
Daylight, hours per day
Dublin
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Glasgow
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Dublin
2
3
4
5
6
6
5
5
4
3
2
2
Glasgow
1
2
3
4
5
4
4
4
3
2
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Dublin: 1991-2020 normals, Dublin Airport (9.3 km from centre). Glasgow: 1991-2020 normals, Glasgow Airport (11.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Dublin is the better bet from June to September, when highs run 17-20°C and rain stays near 61-74mm, well below Glasgow in the same months.

Glasgow's window is narrower. May to July are among its driest months, at 103-129mm, with highs of 15-19°C, so that is when to go. By December rain climbs past 190mm and highs fall to 7°C, while Dublin stays drier and a degree or two warmer.

Getting there

Flying fromDublinGlasgow
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 10 m
€33-43
DUB · 9 km
1 h 20 m
€38-45
GLA · 11 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 35 m
€80-139
DUB · 9 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 45 m
€94-104
1 stop
DUB · 9 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
ArrecifeACE
3 h 55 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
FaroFAO
2 h 50 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
6 h 50 m
€449-527
1 stop
DUB · 9 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
7 h 30 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
CancunCUN
9 h 30 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
GLA · 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

MeasureDublinGlasgow
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 m21 m
Main airportDublin Airport (DUB)9 km from centre201 non-stop destinationsGlasgow Airport (GLA)11 km from centre95 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureDublinGlasgow
City population592,713626,410
People per km²5,154190
Museums within 10 km4029
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre7454
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 Glasgow 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.