VacationSelector

Edinburgh or Ottawa?

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.

Ottawa
43
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.

EdinburghOttawa
Beaches & swimming. Edinburgh leads by 55 points.55
EdinburghOttawa
Score550
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km209
Coast distance3 km423 km
Water distance3 km
Places to eat. Edinburgh leads by 6 points.6
EdinburghOttawa
Score7064
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,023684
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3534
Museums & heritage. Edinburgh leads by 25 points.25
EdinburghOttawa
Score5732
Museums within 10 km3015
Museums within 2 km of centre228
Share of museums within 2 km %7353
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Edinburgh leads by 20 points.20
EdinburghOttawa
Score6444
Drinking venues within 4 km1,193432
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre884303
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7470
Nightclubs within 4 km6535
Nature & day trips. Ottawa leads by 6 points.6
EdinburghOttawa
Score3541
Protected land share 50 km %28
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %85100
Park area within 2 km166 hectares122 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 26 points.26
EdinburghOttawa
Score7246
Tourist attractions within 2 km8711
Park area within 2 km166 hectares122 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Edinburgh leads by 10 points.10
EdinburghOttawa
Score6050
Notable places within 2 km12671
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Edinburgh and Ottawa are level on 54.
EdinburghOttawa
Score5454
Price level global84.984
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Ottawa leads by 2 points.2
EdinburghOttawa
Score5153
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.8 °C-4.9 °C to 27 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 80 mm53 mm to 94 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
Ottawa
-5
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
14
6
-2
Sea temperature, °C
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Ottawa
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
Daylight, hours per day
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Ottawa
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Edinburgh
2
3
4
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
3
2
Ottawa
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Edinburgh: 1991-2020 normals, Edinburgh Airport (10 km from centre). Ottawa: 1991-2020 normals, Ottawa CDA RCS (5.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromEdinburghOttawa
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
€41-45
EDI · 11 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
6 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
CancunCUN
9 h 40 m
no fares
GLA · 78 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
6 h 25 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
50 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 50 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€78-108
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
CalgaryYYC
8 h 20 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
7 h 40 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
8 h 30 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
BostonBOS, PSM
6 h 30 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
YOW · 12 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

MeasureEdinburghOttawa
Official languageEnglishFrench, English
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999911
Elevation47 m70 m
Main airportEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinationsOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureEdinburghOttawa
City population488,0501,017,449
People per km²1,884366
Museums within 10 km3220
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre7862
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 Ottawa 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.