VacationSelector

Dublin or York?

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 sights concentration with your weighting.

York
41
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather 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 fuller city: far more places to eat and drink, more nightlife, and most of the notable sights within walking distance of the centre, plus 11 beaches on the doorstep.

Choose York if you prefer a smaller, quieter base with far more protected countryside around it, drier spring weather and theme parks within reach for a family trip.

Scoreboard

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

DublinYork
Beaches & swimming. Dublin leads by 49 points.49
DublinYork
Score490
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km112
Coast distance3 km50 km
Water distance3 km—
Places to eat. Dublin leads by 16 points.16
DublinYork
Score7054
Restaurants within 2 km of centre920361
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3731
Museums & heritage. Dublin leads by 9 points.9
DublinYork
Score5546
Museums within 10 km4718
Museums within 2 km of centre3716
Share of museums within 2 km %7989
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Dublin leads by 21 points.21
DublinYork
Score6443
Drinking venues within 4 km1,239450
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre934353
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7578
Nightclubs within 4 km4014
Nature & day trips. York leads by 7 points.7
DublinYork
Score2633
Protected land share 50 km %317
Landscape blanket share 50 km %016
Land share of disc %6295
Park area within 2 km43 hectares42 hectares
Good for families. Dublin leads by 11 points.11
DublinYork
Score5443
Tourist attractions within 2 km4113
Park area within 2 km43 hectares42 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. Dublin leads by 23 points.23
DublinYork
Score6239
Notable places within 2 km14137
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dublin leads by 3 points.3
DublinYork
Score5754
Price level global80.284.9
Daily budget€187—
Year-round weather. York leads by 2 points.2
DublinYork
Score5456
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 19.5 °C6.7 °C to 20.9 °C
Monthly rainfall52 mm to 83 mm39 mm to 66 mm
Dry months01
0255075100

Where they differ

Dublin puts far more within walking distance of the centre: about three times as many notable places, three times as many bars and about three times as many nightclubs, most of them central. It also has 11 beaches nearby against York's 2.

York trades that for space and quiet. Around 17% of the land around it is protected against 3% around Dublin, and it has 3 theme parks within reach where Dublin has 1, so a day out of town is easier to arrange.

Where they are alike

Neither city gets hot or cold. Highs run 8-20°C across the year in Dublin and 7-21°C in York, with the same warmest and coolest months, and rain falls in every month in both.

Both also work better as compact city breaks than as countryside bases: park space near the centre is similar in each, and heritage further out comes down to a few sites, 2 UNESCO-listed places within reach of York and 1 of Dublin.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone travelling for evenings out and eating: Dublin, comfortably. It has roughly three times as many bars and clubs as York and a wider range of kitchens, and most of it is walkable from the centre.

Families split by age. York has 3 theme parks within reach against Dublin's 1, which suits younger children; Dublin counters with far more attractions near the centre and 11 beaches nearby against York's 2.

Walkers and day-trippers lean to York: 17% of the surrounding land is protected against 3% around Dublin, so the countryside starts sooner, even though the city itself holds fewer museums.

What the numbers don't tell you

No cost comparison is possible here. Dublin's daily budget works out at about €187, but the dataset carries no equivalent figure for York, so nothing in it tells you whether a York trip costs more or less. The value standing shown for each city rests on a different measure, not on that daily figure.

Dublin's beach count flatters it: the sea tops out at 15°C in August, so this is coast for walking rather than swimming. And York's slightly warmer highs come with rain in every month, its driest still near 39mm.

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
York
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
20
18
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Dublin
9
8
8
9
11
13
15
15
15
13
12
11
York
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Dublin
62
52
52
55
58
65
62
74
61
78
83
72
York
53
44
39
48
43
61
56
65
58
66
62
60
Daylight, hours per day
Dublin
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
York
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Dublin
2
3
4
5
6
6
5
5
4
3
2
2
York
2
3
4
5
6
5
6
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). York: 1991-2020 normals, Leeming (47.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Dublin peaks in July and August, with highs of 20°C and the sea at its warmest, 15°C, in August. That is also its wettest summer month at 74mm, and autumn is heavier still.

York's edge is in spring: March to May bring 39-48mm against Dublin's 52-58mm, and its summer highs run a shade warmer, reaching 21°C in July. Midwinter is wet and dark in both, and neither city rewards a visit then.

Getting there

Flying fromDublinYork
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 10 m
€33-43
DUB · 9 km
55 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 35 m
€80-139
DUB · 9 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€43-47
DUB · 9 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 25 m
€71-105
DUB · 9 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
FaroFAO
2 h 50 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
6 h 50 m
€449-527
1 stop
DUB · 9 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
AgadirAGA
3 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 25 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
CancunCUN
9 h 30 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
9 h 50 m
no fares
MAN · 104 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

MeasureDublinYork
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 m25 m
Main airportDublin Airport (DUB)9 km from centre201 non-stop destinationsLeeds Bradford Airport (LBA)39 km from centre73 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureDublinYork
City population592,713208,400
People per km²5,154766
Museums within 10 km4024
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre7454
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone–

Where else could you go?

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