VacationSelector

Edinburgh or Liverpool?

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 museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.

Liverpool
55
match

Wins on nature & day trips and beaches & swimming 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 Edinburgh if museums, heritage and a compact centre matter most: more of its notable places sit within walking distance, and there are far more attractions and restaurants close to the middle of town.

Choose Liverpool if you want the warmer summer, with July highs of 21°C, the sea 2km from the centre with more beaches, and 3 theme parks within reach for a family week.

Scoreboard

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

EdinburghLiverpool
Beaches & swimming. Liverpool leads by 5 points.5
EdinburghLiverpool
Score5560
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km2034
Coast distance3 km2 km
Water distance3 km2 km
Places to eat. Edinburgh leads by 10 points.10
EdinburghLiverpool
Score7060
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,023542
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3532
Museums & heritage. Edinburgh leads by 14 points.14
EdinburghLiverpool
Score5743
Museums within 10 km3023
Museums within 2 km of centre2212
Share of museums within 2 km %7352
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Edinburgh leads by 3 points.3
EdinburghLiverpool
Score6461
Drinking venues within 4 km1,193977
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre884651
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7467
Nightclubs within 4 km6579
Nature & day trips. Liverpool leads by 23 points.23
EdinburghLiverpool
Score3558
Protected land share 50 km %2—
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %8560
Park area within 2 km166 hectares81 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 14 points.14
EdinburghLiverpool
Score7258
Tourist attractions within 2 km8725
Park area within 2 km166 hectares81 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. Edinburgh leads by 10 points.10
EdinburghLiverpool
Score6050
Notable places within 2 km12668
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Edinburgh and Liverpool are level on 54.
EdinburghLiverpool
Score5454
Price level global84.984.9
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Liverpool leads by 3 points.3
EdinburghLiverpool
Score5154
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.8 °C7.2 °C to 20.8 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 80 mm51 mm to 95 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Edinburgh holds more museums, with 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Liverpool's 2, and they sit tightly around the centre. It also has about three times as many tourist attractions near the centre, twice as much park space, and about twice as many restaurants close in.

Liverpool is the better base for nature and days out further afield, and it has 3 theme parks within reach where Edinburgh has none. The sea is 2km from its centre against 3km, with 34 beaches nearby against 20.

Where they are alike

Nightlife lands in much the same place. Edinburgh has somewhat more places to drink, Liverpool somewhat more nightclubs, and in both cities most of them sit near the centre, so an evening works on foot.

The weather runs close as well: both peak in July, both drop to 7°C in January, and neither has a month of sea at 21°C or more. Each has water within 3km of the centre, so a beach day is possible in both, and cold in both.

Which traveller are you?

Museum-minded travellers and city walkers should take Edinburgh: more museums, 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Liverpool's 2, and about twice as many notable places within walking distance of the centre.

Families split. Edinburgh has about three times as many tourist attractions near the centre and twice the park space; Liverpool answers with 3 theme parks within reach and 34 beaches nearby, though those mean travel days.

Anyone building the trip around days out of town leans Liverpool, the stronger base for nature and excursions, with the sea 2km from the centre for an easy afternoon.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figures here are identical because they reflect a national price level rather than anything either city does, so that comparison carries no information. The dataset also holds no daily budget for either city, so no cost comparison between the two is possible at all.

Beach counts flatter both. Liverpool has more beaches and the shorter walk to water, but the sea tops out at 17°C in August, and Edinburgh's at 14°C, so swims are short. The warmest months are not the driest either: August brings 69-73mm across the two, so summer still needs a wet-weather plan.

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
Liverpool
7
8
10
13
17
19
21
20
18
14
10
8
Sea temperature, °C
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Liverpool
7
6
7
9
11
14
16
17
16
14
11
9
Rainfall, mm
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Liverpool
67
62
51
61
59
63
60
73
71
95
86
84
Daylight, hours per day
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Liverpool
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Edinburgh
2
3
4
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
3
2
Liverpool
2
2
3
5
6
6
6
6
4
3
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). Liverpool: 1991-2020 normals, Manchester Airport (47.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Edinburgh suits the shoulder months. February to April is its driest stretch, 43-47mm a month against Liverpool's 51-62mm, and October to December stays drier too, 63-80mm against 84-95mm, which matters more here than the small gap in daytime highs.

Liverpool is the stronger summer pick: July highs of 21°C against 19°C, sea at 17°C in August against 14°C, and July is also its driest summer month, 60mm against Edinburgh's 65mm.

Getting there

Flying fromEdinburghLiverpool
PalmaPMI
2 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
LPL · 12 km
KerkyraCFU
3 h 35 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
LPL · 12 km
Puerto del RosarioFUE
4 h 25 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
LPL · 12 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 30 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
LPL · 12 km
MalagaAGP
3 h 10 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
LPL · 12 km
ArrecifeACE
4 h 20 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
LPL · 12 km
AlicanteALC
3 h 0 m
€106
EDI · 11 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
LPL · 12 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
LPL · 12 km
BridgetownBGI
8 h 30 m
no fares
GLA · 78 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
MAN · 48 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 50 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
7 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 48 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

MeasureEdinburghLiverpool
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 m70 m
Main airportEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinationsLiverpool John Lennon Airport (LPL)12 km from centre74 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureEdinburghLiverpool
City population488,050513,441
People per km²1,8844,592
Museums within 10 km3231
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre7849
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 Liverpool 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 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.