VacationSelector

Edinburgh or Tromso?

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 good for families and nightlife with your weighting.

Tromso
27
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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.

EdinburghTromso
Beaches & swimming. Edinburgh leads by 3 points.3
EdinburghTromso
Score5552
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km2014
Coast distance3 km0 km
Water distance3 km0 km
Places to eat. Edinburgh leads by 46 points.46
EdinburghTromso
Score7024
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,02385
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3516
Museums & heritage. Edinburgh leads by 34 points.34
EdinburghTromso
Score5723
Museums within 10 km3010
Museums within 2 km of centre228
Share of museums within 2 km %7380
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Edinburgh leads by 57 points.57
EdinburghTromso
Score647
Drinking venues within 4 km1,19367
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre88461
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7491
Nightclubs within 4 km655
Nature & day trips. Edinburgh leads by 24 points.24
EdinburghTromso
Score3511
Protected land share 50 km %29
Landscape blanket share 50 km %19
Land share of disc %8565
Park area within 2 km166 hectares7 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 58 points.58
EdinburghTromso
Score7214
Tourist attractions within 2 km879
Park area within 2 km166 hectares7 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Edinburgh leads by 32 points.32
EdinburghTromso
Score6028
Notable places within 2 km12620
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Edinburgh and Tromso are level on 54.
EdinburghTromso
Score5454
Price level global84.985.1
Daily budget€203
Year-round weather. Edinburgh leads by 18 points.18
EdinburghTromso
Score5133
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.8 °C-1.1 °C to 16.3 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 80 mm56 mm to 128 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
Tromso
-1
-1
1
4
9
13
16
15
11
5
2
0
Sea temperature, °C
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Tromso
5
5
4
4
6
8
10
11
10
9
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Tromso
108
95
97
71
56
57
73
90
110
128
94
110
Daylight, hours per day
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Tromso
2
7
12
16
22
24
24
18
14
9
4
0
Sunshine, hours per day
Edinburgh
2
3
4
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
3
2
Tromso
0
1
3
6
8
8
8
6
3
2
0
0

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Edinburgh: 1991-2020 normals, Edinburgh Airport (10 km from centre). Tromso: 1991-2020 normals, Tromso (0.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromEdinburghTromso
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 50 m
€55-94
EDI · 11 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
€41-45
EDI · 11 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
HelsinkiHEL
2 h 40 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
GdanskGDN
2 h 20 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€78-108
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 15 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
ZurichZRH
2 h 10 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
3 h 40 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
BerlinBER
2 h 0 m
€141-162
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 20 m
€75-101
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
TOS · 4 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

MeasureEdinburghTromso
Official languageEnglishNorwegian, Nynorsk, Bokmål, Sámi
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Norwegian Krone (NOK)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999Police 112, ambulance 113, fire 110
Elevation47 m20 m
Main airportEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinationsTromsø Airport (TOS)4 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureEdinburghTromso
City population488,05079,943
People per km²1,88432
Museums within 10 km328
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre7823
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 Tromso 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.