VacationSelector

Edinburgh or Cardiff?

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

Your match

Edinburgh
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on good for families and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Cardiff
48
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 Cardiff if museums and open country matter more than city density: twice the museum count, protected land right around the city, and a slightly warmer sea, reaching 18°C in August.

Choose Edinburgh if you want the trip packed into walking distance: more restaurants, bars and clubs near the centre, far more attractions to keep children busy, and 20 beaches within reach of the city.

Scoreboard

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

EdinburghCardiff
Beaches & swimming. Edinburgh leads by 9 points.9
EdinburghCardiff
Score5546
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km208
Coast distance3 km2 km
Water distance3 km2 km
Places to eat. Edinburgh leads by 10 points.10
EdinburghCardiff
Score7060
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,023541
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3532
Museums & heritage. Edinburgh leads by 18 points.18
EdinburghCardiff
Score5739
Museums within 10 km3061
Museums within 2 km of centre226
Share of museums within 2 km %7310
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Edinburgh leads by 16 points.16
EdinburghCardiff
Score6448
Drinking venues within 4 km1,193536
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre884395
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7474
Nightclubs within 4 km6535
Nature & day trips. Cardiff leads by 15 points.15
EdinburghCardiff
Score3550
Protected land share 50 km %218
Landscape blanket share 50 km %115
Land share of disc %8568
Park area within 2 km166 hectares88 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 40 points.40
EdinburghCardiff
Score7232
Tourist attractions within 2 km874
Park area within 2 km166 hectares88 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Edinburgh leads by 15 points.15
EdinburghCardiff
Score6045
Notable places within 2 km12651
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Edinburgh and Cardiff are level on 54.
EdinburghCardiff
Score5454
Price level global84.984.9
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Cardiff leads by 3 points.3
EdinburghCardiff
Score5154
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.8 °C7.7 °C to 20.2 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 80 mm49 mm to 87 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Cardiff has about twice as many museums as Edinburgh, and far more open country on its doorstep: 18% of the surrounding land is protected, against 2% around Edinburgh. It also has 2 theme parks within reach, where Edinburgh has none.

Edinburgh has many times as many attractions near the centre and about twice as much park space, which makes it the easier city with children. Its bars and nightclubs each outnumber Cardiff's roughly two to one, and it has 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Cardiff's 1.

Where they are alike

Both are mild rather than warm, and neither swings much: Cardiff runs 8-20°C across the year, Edinburgh 7-19°C. Rain is a constant rather than a season, with no month at 40mm or less.

The sea is close to both centres, 2km at Cardiff and 3km at Edinburgh, though neither warms enough for easy swimming. Eating out is comparable in kind too: the two offer a similar range of kitchens, even if Edinburgh has more of them.

Which traveller are you?

Travelling with children: Edinburgh, for the concentration of attractions near the centre and roughly twice the park space. Cardiff answers only if theme parks are the point, since it has 2 within reach and Edinburgh none.

Walkers and day-trippers: Cardiff, where 18% of the surrounding land is protected against 2% around Edinburgh, and where twice the museums give you wet-weather options between trips, plus a sea at 18°C in August if swimming is on the list.

A weekend of eating and going out: Edinburgh, with about twice as many restaurants near the centre and roughly twice the bars and clubs, most close enough to walk between, plus more notable places within walking distance.

What the numbers don't tell you

The two cities share a value figure because it is a national price level, identical for both by construction. It tells you nothing about which trip costs more. No daily budget figure exists here for either city, so no cost comparison between them is possible; treat accommodation and eating out as unknowns to check yourself.

Edinburgh's larger count of nearby beaches reflects access rather than swimming: its sea peaks at 14°C in August, where Cardiff's reaches 18°C. And the warmest months are not the driest in either city, so the summer window that reads best still carries rain: neither has a month at 40mm or less.

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
Edinburgh
7
7
9
12
14
17
19
19
17
13
9
7
Cardiff
8
8
10
13
16
18
20
20
18
14
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Rainfall, mm
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Daylight, hours per day
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Edinburgh
2
3
4
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
3
2
Cardiff
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Edinburgh: 1991-2020 normals, Edinburgh Airport (10 km from centre). Cardiff: 1991-2020 normals, Cardiff-Wales Airport (14.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Cardiff peaks in July and August, with highs of 20°C and the sea reaching 18°C, which matters if you intend to swim. Its weak stretch is late autumn, with 87mm in October, wetter than Edinburgh at the same time.

Edinburgh is the drier pick in spring, with 43mm in April, and it stays drier than Cardiff in most months. Its summer is slightly cooler at 19°C, and the sea only reaches 14°C, so treat it as a city for walking rather than swimming.

Getting there

Flying fromEdinburghCardiff
PalmaPMI
2 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
Puerto del RosarioFUE
4 h 25 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
AntalyaAYT
4 h 35 m
€195-238
2 stops
EDI · 11 km
4 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
Las PalmasLPA
4 h 30 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
ArrecifeACE
4 h 20 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
KerkyraCFU
3 h 35 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
RhodesRHO
4 h 25 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
4 h 10 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
BridgetownBGI
8 h 30 m
no fares
GLA · 78 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
6 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
CWL · 15 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 2026-09 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

MeasureEdinburghCardiff
Official languageEnglishEnglish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112 or 999
Elevation47 m41 m
Main airportEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinationsCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureEdinburghCardiff
City population488,050383,536
People per km²1,8842,734
Museums within 10 km329
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre7855
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Edinburgh or Cardiff 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). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. 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.