VacationSelector

Edinburgh or Paphos?

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 sights concentration and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Paphos
46
match

Wins on year-round weather 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.

Scoreboard

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

EdinburghPaphos
Beaches & swimming. Paphos leads by 24 points.24
EdinburghPaphos
Score5579
Swim season months06
Beaches 10 km2027
Coast distance3 km1 km
Water distance3 km1 km
Places to eat. Edinburgh leads by 26 points.26
EdinburghPaphos
Score7044
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,023251
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3522
Museums & heritage. Edinburgh leads by 35 points.35
EdinburghPaphos
Score5722
Museums within 10 km308
Museums within 2 km of centre223
Share of museums within 2 km %7338
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Edinburgh leads by 34 points.34
EdinburghPaphos
Score6430
Drinking venues within 4 km1,193224
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre884161
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7472
Nightclubs within 4 km6511
Nature & day trips. Edinburgh leads by 12 points.12
EdinburghPaphos
Score3523
Protected land share 50 km %22
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %8533
Park area within 2 km166 hectares27 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 30 points.30
EdinburghPaphos
Score7242
Tourist attractions within 2 km8730
Park area within 2 km166 hectares27 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Edinburgh leads by 41 points.41
EdinburghPaphos
Score6019
Notable places within 2 km12612
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Paphos leads by 16 points.16
EdinburghPaphos
Score5470
Price level global84.961.4
Daily budget€129
Year-round weather. Paphos leads by 35 points.35
EdinburghPaphos
Score5186
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.8 °C17 °C to 30.8 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 80 mm0 mm to 98 mm
Dry months08
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
Paphos
17
17
19
21
25
28
30
31
29
27
23
19
Sea temperature, °C
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Paphos
17
17
17
18
21
24
27
28
27
25
22
19
Rainfall, mm
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Paphos
81
47
29
17
10
2
1
0
5
14
42
98
Daylight, hours per day
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Paphos
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Edinburgh
2
3
4
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
3
2
Paphos
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). Paphos: 1991-2020 normals, Paphos Airport (8.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromEdinburghPaphos
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
€41-45
EDI · 11 km
4 h 25 m
€125-167
PFO · 8 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 35 m
€150-240
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
3 h 0 m
€206-323
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
AthensATH
4 h 0 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
ThessalonikiSKG
3 h 40 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 55 m
€96-218
PFO · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€78-108
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
4 h 5 m
€197-331
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 20 m
€75-101
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
3 h 25 m
€125-152
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
NaplesNAP
3 h 10 m
€116-161
2 stops
EDI · 11 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
BirminghamBHX
1 h 10 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
BelfastBFS, BHD
55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
5 h 0 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€117-158
EDI · 11 km
4 h 5 m
€253-340
1 stop
PFO · 8 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

MeasureEdinburghPaphos
Official languageEnglishTurkish, Greek, Modern Greek
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzG240 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation47 m72 m
Main airportEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinationsPaphos International Airport (PFO)8 km from centre57 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days17 days

By the numbers

MeasureEdinburghPaphos
City population488,05035,961
People per km²1,8841,987
Museums within 10 km324
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre7836
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone6 months

Where else could you go?

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