VacationSelector

Edinburgh or Heidelberg?

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 nightlife with your weighting.

Heidelberg
45
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.

Scoreboard

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

EdinburghHeidelberg
Beaches & swimming. Edinburgh leads by 55 points.55
EdinburghHeidelberg
Score550
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km206
Coast distance3 km406 km
Water distance3 km
Places to eat. Edinburgh leads by 23 points.23
EdinburghHeidelberg
Score7047
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,023269
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3526
Museums & heritage. Heidelberg leads by 2 points.2
EdinburghHeidelberg
Score5759
Museums within 10 km3054
Museums within 2 km of centre2223
Share of museums within 2 km %7343
Unesco sites within 50 km34
Nightlife. Edinburgh leads by 37 points.37
EdinburghHeidelberg
Score6427
Drinking venues within 4 km1,193201
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre884169
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7484
Nightclubs within 4 km658
Nature & day trips. Heidelberg leads by 39 points.39
EdinburghHeidelberg
Score3574
Protected land share 50 km %252
Landscape blanket share 50 km %122
Land share of disc %85100
Park area within 2 km166 hectares20 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 29 points.29
EdinburghHeidelberg
Score7243
Tourist attractions within 2 km8729
Park area within 2 km166 hectares20 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Edinburgh leads by 24 points.24
EdinburghHeidelberg
Score6036
Notable places within 2 km12631
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Heidelberg leads by 6 points.6
EdinburghHeidelberg
Score5460
Price level global84.975.9
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Heidelberg leads by 10 points.10
EdinburghHeidelberg
Score5161
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.8 °C5.2 °C to 25.8 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 80 mm45 mm to 80 mm
Dry months00
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
Heidelberg
5
7
12
17
21
24
26
26
21
15
9
6
Sea temperature, °C
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Heidelberg
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Heidelberg
46
46
53
45
69
66
80
67
56
61
62
64
Daylight, hours per day
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Heidelberg
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Edinburgh
2
3
4
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
3
2
Heidelberg
2
3
4
6
7
7
8
7
6
4
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Edinburgh: 1991-2020 normals, Edinburgh Airport (10 km from centre). Heidelberg: 1991-2020 normals, Heidelberg (4.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromEdinburghHeidelberg
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
€41-45
EDI · 11 km
1 h 25 m
€74-124
FRA · 69 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
FRA · 69 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 50 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
7 h 55 m
€537-713
FRA · 69 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 20 m
€75-101
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
1 h 15 m
€71-108
FRA · 69 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€78-108
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
1 h 10 m
€139-148
FRA · 69 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 0 m
€201-242
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
2 h 50 m
€135-301
FRA · 69 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 35 m
€150-240
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
1 h 25 m
€141-152
FRA · 69 km
BerlinBER
2 h 0 m
€141-162
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
1 h 10 m
€157-188
FRA · 69 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 30 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
6 h 20 m
€296-339
1 stop
FRA · 69 km
CancunCUN
9 h 40 m
no fares
GLA · 78 km
10 h 45 m
no fares
FRA · 69 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

MeasureEdinburghHeidelberg
Official languageEnglishGerman
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation47 m114 m
Main airportEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinationsFrankfurt Main Airport (FRA)69 km from centre293 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureEdinburghHeidelberg
City population488,050162,960
People per km²1,8841,496
Museums within 10 km3217
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km34
Distinct cuisines in the centre7845
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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