VacationSelector

Edinburgh or Faro?

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 nightlife and sights concentration with your weighting.

Faro
47
match

Wins on year-round weather and 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.

Scoreboard

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

EdinburghFaro
Beaches & swimming. Faro leads by 6 points.6
EdinburghFaro
Score5561
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km2013
Coast distance3 km0 km
Water distance3 km0 km
Places to eat. Edinburgh leads by 26 points.26
EdinburghFaro
Score7044
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,023255
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3522
Museums & heritage. Edinburgh leads by 35 points.35
EdinburghFaro
Score5722
Museums within 10 km309
Museums within 2 km of centre228
Share of museums within 2 km %7389
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Edinburgh leads by 43 points.43
EdinburghFaro
Score6421
Drinking venues within 4 km1,193143
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre884123
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7486
Nightclubs within 4 km658
Nature & day trips. Faro leads by 22 points.22
EdinburghFaro
Score3557
Protected land share 50 km %211
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %8542
Park area within 2 km166 hectares34 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 36 points.36
EdinburghFaro
Score7236
Tourist attractions within 2 km8710
Park area within 2 km166 hectares34 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Edinburgh leads by 38 points.38
EdinburghFaro
Score6022
Notable places within 2 km12614
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Faro leads by 20 points.20
EdinburghFaro
Score5474
Price level global84.955.9
Daily budget€109
Year-round weather. Faro leads by 32 points.32
EdinburghFaro
Score5183
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.8 °C16.3 °C to 29 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 80 mm1 mm to 102 mm
Dry months06
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
Edinburgh
7
7
9
12
14
17
19
19
17
13
9
7
Faro
16
17
19
21
24
27
29
29
26
23
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Faro
17
16
16
17
18
20
21
22
21
21
19
17
Rainfall, mm
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Faro
55
39
44
40
23
6
1
5
28
57
75
102
Daylight, hours per day
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Faro
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Edinburgh
2
3
4
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
3
2
Faro
6
6
8
9
10
12
12
11
9
8
6
6

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Edinburgh: 1991-2020 normals, Edinburgh Airport (10 km from centre). Faro: 1991-2020 normals, Faro / Aeroporto (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromEdinburghFaro
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
€41-45
EDI · 11 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
DublinDUB
1 h 5 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
2 h 50 m
€75-114
FAO · 3 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€78-108
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
2 h 30 m
€126-204
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
BelfastBFS, BHD
55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
1 h 40 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
3 h 0 m
€138-208
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 35 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€117-158
EDI · 11 km
3 h 0 m
€144-189
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
LisbonLIS
3 h 0 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
55 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 50 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
7 h 15 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
FAO · 3 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

MeasureEdinburghFaro
Official languageEnglishPortuguese
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation47 m10 m
Main airportEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinationsFaro - Gago Coutinho International Airport (FAO)3 km from centre91 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureEdinburghFaro
City population488,05064,560
People per km²1,884319
Museums within 10 km322
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre7834
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Edinburgh or Faro 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.