VacationSelector

Galway or London?

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

Your match

Galway
39
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

London
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration 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.

GalwayLondon
Beaches & swimming. Galway leads by 51 points.51
GalwayLondon
Score510
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1347
Coast distance1 km43 km
Water distance1 km—
Places to eat. London leads by 51 points.51
GalwayLondon
Score3788
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1733,317
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2040
Museums & heritage. London leads by 52 points.52
GalwayLondon
Score2072
Museums within 10 km5148
Museums within 2 km of centre549
Share of museums within 2 km %10033
Unesco sites within 50 km04
Nightlife. London leads by 69 points.69
GalwayLondon
Score2695
Drinking venues within 4 km1855,327
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1532,443
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8346
Nightclubs within 4 km8312
Nature & day trips. Galway leads by 15 points.15
GalwayLondon
Score5540
Protected land share 50 km %—16
Landscape blanket share 50 km %014
Land share of disc %8597
Park area within 2 km65 hectares84 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 50 points.50
GalwayLondon
Score2575
Tourist attractions within 2 km585
Park area within 2 km65 hectares84 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. London leads by 67 points.67
GalwayLondon
Score2289
Notable places within 2 km14649
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Galway leads by 3 points.3
GalwayLondon
Score5754
Price level global80.284.9
Daily budget€187—
Year-round weather. London leads by 9 points.9
GalwayLondon
Score5463
Monthly daytime high8.9 °C to 19.6 °C8.2 °C to 23.8 °C
Monthly rainfall63 mm to 113 mm38 mm to 67 mm
Dry months01
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
Galway
9
10
11
14
16
19
20
19
18
14
11
9
London
8
9
12
15
18
22
24
23
20
16
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Galway
9
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
15
14
12
10
London
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Galway
100
87
76
63
63
72
76
89
77
101
104
113
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Daylight, hours per day
Galway
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Galway
2
2
4
5
6
5
4
5
4
3
2
2
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Galway: 1991-2020 normals, Shannon Airport (64.2 km from centre). London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGalwayLondon
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
FaroFAO
2 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 35 m
€119-292
1 stop
LGW · 40 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 20 m
€66-100
LGW · 40 km
ArrecifeACE
3 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 10 m
€79-116
LGW · 40 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
BostonBOS, PSM
6 h 10 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
6 h 50 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
Puerto del RosarioFUE
3 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
LGW · 40 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

MeasureGalwayLondon
Official languageEnglish, IrishEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation25 m4 m
Main airportShannon Airport (SNN)64 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureGalwayLondon
City population83,4568,799,728
People per km²1,5635,598
Museums within 10 km4215
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km04
Distinct cuisines in the centre25116
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone–

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Galway or London 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.