VacationSelector

Edinburgh or Ghent?

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 beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Ghent
50
match

Wins on value for money 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.

Scoreboard

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

EdinburghGhent
Beaches & swimming. Edinburgh leads by 29 points.29
EdinburghGhent
Score5526
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km208
Coast distance3 km32 km
Water distance3 km32 km
Places to eat. Edinburgh and Ghent are level on 70.
EdinburghGhent
Score7070
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,023764
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3549
Museums & heritage. Ghent leads by 1 points.1
EdinburghGhent
Score5758
Museums within 10 km3024
Museums within 2 km of centre2220
Share of museums within 2 km %7383
Unesco sites within 50 km35
Nightlife. Edinburgh leads by 15 points.15
EdinburghGhent
Score6449
Drinking venues within 4 km1,193570
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre884446
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7478
Nightclubs within 4 km6526
Nature & day trips. Edinburgh leads by 1 points.1
EdinburghGhent
Score3534
Protected land share 50 km %27
Landscape blanket share 50 km %14
Land share of disc %8587
Park area within 2 km166 hectares84 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 22 points.22
EdinburghGhent
Score7250
Tourist attractions within 2 km8719
Park area within 2 km166 hectares84 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Edinburgh leads by 14 points.14
EdinburghGhent
Score6046
Notable places within 2 km12655
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Ghent leads by 6 points.6
EdinburghGhent
Score5460
Price level global84.976.2
Daily budget€180
Year-round weather. Ghent leads by 5 points.5
EdinburghGhent
Score5156
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.8 °C6.4 °C to 22 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 80 mm35 mm to 79 mm
Dry months01
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
Ghent
6
7
10
13
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Ghent
6
6
6
9
12
16
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Ghent
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Daylight, hours per day
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Ghent
9
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
Ghent
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Edinburgh: 1991-2020 normals, Edinburgh Airport (10 km from centre). Ghent: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (44.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromEdinburghGhent
MadridMAD
2 h 40 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 56 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
€41-45
EDI · 11 km
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 40 m
€58-103
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 56 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 20 m
€75-101
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
1 h 25 m
€36-101
BRU · 56 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 50 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 35 m
€150-240
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
1 h 45 m
€93-156
BRU · 56 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 55 m
€99-141
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 0 m
€201-242
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 56 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 50 m
€55-94
EDI · 11 km
1 h 35 m
€117-136
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 30 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 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

MeasureEdinburghGhent
Official languageEnglishFrench, German, Dutch
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation47 m12 m
Main airportEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinationsBrussels Airport (BRU)56 km from centre191 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureEdinburghGhent
City population488,050272,657
People per km²1,8841,728
Museums within 10 km3230
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km35
Distinct cuisines in the centre7883
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 Ghent 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.