VacationSelector

Edinburgh or Vancouver?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Edinburgh
58
match

Wins on museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.

Vancouver
57
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.

Scoreboard

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

EdinburghVancouver
Beaches & swimming. Vancouver leads by 5 points.5
EdinburghVancouver
Score5560
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km20109
Coast distance3 km1 km
Water distance3 km1 km
Places to eat. Vancouver leads by 4 points.4
EdinburghVancouver
Score7074
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0231,330
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3535
Museums & heritage. Edinburgh leads by 23 points.23
EdinburghVancouver
Score5734
Museums within 10 km3027
Museums within 2 km of centre2215
Share of museums within 2 km %7356
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Edinburgh leads by 7 points.7
EdinburghVancouver
Score6457
Drinking venues within 4 km1,193848
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre884602
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7471
Nightclubs within 4 km6544
Nature & day trips. Vancouver leads by 42 points.42
EdinburghVancouver
Score3577
Protected land share 50 km %219
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %8560
Park area within 2 km166 hectares103 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 19 points.19
EdinburghVancouver
Score7253
Tourist attractions within 2 km8715
Park area within 2 km166 hectares103 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. Edinburgh leads by 12 points.12
EdinburghVancouver
Score6048
Notable places within 2 km12663
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Edinburgh and Vancouver are level on 54.
EdinburghVancouver
Score5454
Price level global84.984
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Vancouver leads by 2 points.2
EdinburghVancouver
Score5153
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.8 °C7.3 °C to 23 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 80 mm42 mm to 245 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
Vancouver
7
8
11
14
18
20
23
23
19
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Vancouver
7
7
8
10
12
14
16
16
14
11
9
8
Rainfall, mm
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Vancouver
237
121
164
114
73
65
42
49
71
155
245
196
Daylight, hours per day
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Vancouver
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Edinburgh
2
3
4
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
3
2
Vancouver
2
3
4
6
8
7
10
9
7
4
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). Vancouver: 1991-2020 normals, Vancouver Harbour CS (4.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromEdinburghVancouver
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
€41-45
EDI · 11 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 50 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
5 h 15 m
€353-356
YVR · 9 km
CancunCUN
9 h 40 m
no fares
GLA · 78 km
5 h 55 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
6 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
4 h 35 m
€210-223
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€78-108
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
6 h 25 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
5 h 0 m
€219-262
2 stops
YVR · 9 km
CalgaryYYC
8 h 20 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 30 m
€73-86
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
10 h 10 m
€743-810
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
7 h 40 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
ZurichZRH
2 h 10 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
YVR · 9 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

MeasureEdinburghVancouver
Official languageEnglishFrench, English
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999911
Elevation47 m2 m
Main airportEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinationsVancouver International Airport (YVR)9 km from centre99 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureEdinburghVancouver
City population488,050662,248
People per km²1,8845,759
Museums within 10 km3226
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre7885
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 Vancouver 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.