VacationSelector

Galway or Paphos?

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 nature & day trips and sights concentration with your weighting.

Paphos
✓ Best match
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.

GalwayPaphos
Beaches & swimming. Paphos leads by 28 points.28
GalwayPaphos
Score5179
Swim season months06
Beaches 10 km1327
Coast distance1 km1 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. Paphos leads by 7 points.7
GalwayPaphos
Score3744
Restaurants within 2 km of centre173251
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2022
Museums & heritage. Paphos leads by 2 points.2
GalwayPaphos
Score2022
Museums within 10 km58
Museums within 2 km of centre53
Share of museums within 2 km %10038
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. Paphos leads by 4 points.4
GalwayPaphos
Score2630
Drinking venues within 4 km185224
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre153161
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8372
Nightclubs within 4 km811
Nature & day trips. Galway leads by 32 points.32
GalwayPaphos
Score5523
Protected land share 50 km %2
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8533
Park area within 2 km65 hectares27 hectares
Good for families. Paphos leads by 17 points.17
GalwayPaphos
Score2542
Tourist attractions within 2 km530
Park area within 2 km65 hectares27 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Galway leads by 3 points.3
GalwayPaphos
Score2219
Notable places within 2 km1412
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Paphos leads by 13 points.13
GalwayPaphos
Score5770
Price level global80.261.4
Daily budget€187€129
Year-round weather. Paphos leads by 32 points.32
GalwayPaphos
Score5486
Monthly daytime high8.9 °C to 19.6 °C17 °C to 30.8 °C
Monthly rainfall63 mm to 113 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
Galway
9
10
11
14
16
19
20
19
18
14
11
9
Paphos
17
17
19
21
25
28
30
31
29
27
23
19
Sea temperature, °C
Galway
9
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
15
14
12
10
Paphos
17
17
17
18
21
24
27
28
27
25
22
19
Rainfall, mm
Galway
100
87
76
63
63
72
76
89
77
101
104
113
Paphos
81
47
29
17
10
2
1
0
5
14
42
98
Daylight, hours per day
Galway
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Paphos
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Galway
2
2
4
5
6
5
4
5
4
3
2
2
Paphos
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Galway: 1991-2020 normals, Shannon Airport (64.2 km from centre). Paphos: 1991-2020 normals, Paphos Airport (8.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGalwayPaphos
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
4 h 25 m
€125-167
PFO · 8 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 10 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
5 h 0 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
BirminghamBHX
1 h 15 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
WroclawWRO
2 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
KrakowKRK
3 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
3 h 0 m
€129-174
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
BristolBRS
1 h 15 m
no fares
NOC · 73 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
BudapestBUD
3 h 5 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 45 m
€143-223
PFO · 8 km
EdinburghEDI
1 h 15 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
4 h 55 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
NottinghamEMA
1 h 15 m
no fares
NOC · 73 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
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 2026-09 to 2026-09, 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

MeasureGalwayPaphos
Official languageEnglish, IrishTurkish, Greek, Modern Greek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzG240 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation25 m72 m
Main airportShannon Airport (SNN)64 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsPaphos International Airport (PFO)8 km from centre57 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days17 days

By the numbers

MeasureGalwayPaphos
City population83,45635,961
People per km²1,5631,987
Museums within 10 km44
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre2536
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 Galway 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). 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. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.