VacationSelector

Edinburgh or Lisbon?

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

Your match

Edinburgh
58
match

Wins on good for families with your weighting.

Lisbon
✓ Best match
68
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.

EdinburghLisbon
Beaches & swimming. Lisbon leads by 2 points.2
EdinburghLisbon
Score5557
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km2024
Coast distance3 km2 km
Water distance3 km2 km
Places to eat. Lisbon leads by 10 points.10
EdinburghLisbon
Score7080
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0232,496
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3531
Museums & heritage. Lisbon leads by 13 points.13
EdinburghLisbon
Score5770
Museums within 10 km30124
Museums within 2 km of centre2254
Share of museums within 2 km %7344
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Lisbon leads by 1 points.1
EdinburghLisbon
Score6465
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1931,225
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre884956
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7478
Nightclubs within 4 km6565
Nature & day trips. Lisbon leads by 21 points.21
EdinburghLisbon
Score3556
Protected land share 50 km %211
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %8554
Park area within 2 km166 hectares77 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 3 points.3
EdinburghLisbon
Score7269
Tourist attractions within 2 km8782
Park area within 2 km166 hectares77 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Lisbon leads by 6 points.6
EdinburghLisbon
Score6066
Notable places within 2 km126169
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lisbon leads by 20 points.20
EdinburghLisbon
Score5474
Price level global84.955.9
Daily budget€109
Year-round weather. Lisbon leads by 27 points.27
EdinburghLisbon
Score5178
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.8 °C14.9 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 80 mm3 mm to 121 mm
Dry months04
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
Lisbon
15
16
19
20
23
26
28
28
26
23
18
15
Sea temperature, °C
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Lisbon
15
15
15
15
16
18
18
19
19
18
17
16
Rainfall, mm
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Lisbon
104
73
72
67
53
13
3
7
36
108
121
102
Daylight, hours per day
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Lisbon
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Edinburgh
2
3
4
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
3
2
Lisbon
5
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Edinburgh: 1991-2020 normals, Edinburgh Airport (10 km from centre). Lisbon: 1991-2020 normals, Lisboa / Geof (1.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromEdinburghLisbon
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
€41-45
EDI · 11 km
2 h 30 m
€112-185
LIS · 7 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€78-108
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
2 h 25 m
€118-145
LIS · 7 km
MadridMAD
2 h 40 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 15 m
€64-74
LIS · 7 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 40 m
€58-103
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
1 h 50 m
€74-97
LIS · 7 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 20 m
€75-101
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
2 h 35 m
€124-144
LIS · 7 km
FunchalFNC
3 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 50 m
€132-180
LIS · 7 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€117-158
EDI · 11 km
2 h 50 m
€167-189
LIS · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 50 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
7 h 0 m
€621-718
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 35 m
€95-118
LIS · 7 km
CancunCUN
9 h 40 m
no fares
GLA · 78 km
9 h 30 m
no fares
LIS · 7 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

MeasureEdinburghLisbon
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 m100 m
Main airportEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinationsLisbon Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS)7 km from centre153 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureEdinburghLisbon
City population488,050545,796
People per km²1,8845,453
Museums within 10 km3278
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre78106
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 Lisbon 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.