VacationSelector

Galway or York?

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, 2 points apart

Galway
39
match

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

York
41
match

Wins on museums & heritage and good for families 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.

GalwayYork
Beaches & swimming. Galway leads by 51 points.51
GalwayYork
Score510
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km132
Coast distance1 km50 km
Water distance1 km—
Places to eat. York leads by 17 points.17
GalwayYork
Score3754
Restaurants within 2 km of centre173361
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2031
Museums & heritage. York leads by 26 points.26
GalwayYork
Score2046
Museums within 10 km518
Museums within 2 km of centre516
Share of museums within 2 km %10089
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. York leads by 17 points.17
GalwayYork
Score2643
Drinking venues within 4 km185450
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre153353
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8378
Nightclubs within 4 km814
Nature & day trips. Galway leads by 22 points.22
GalwayYork
Score5533
Protected land share 50 km %—17
Landscape blanket share 50 km %016
Land share of disc %8595
Park area within 2 km65 hectares42 hectares
Good for families. York leads by 18 points.18
GalwayYork
Score2543
Tourist attractions within 2 km513
Park area within 2 km65 hectares42 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. York leads by 17 points.17
GalwayYork
Score2239
Notable places within 2 km1437
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Galway leads by 3 points.3
GalwayYork
Score5754
Price level global80.284.9
Daily budget€187—
Year-round weather. York leads by 2 points.2
GalwayYork
Score5456
Monthly daytime high8.9 °C to 19.6 °C6.7 °C to 20.9 °C
Monthly rainfall63 mm to 113 mm39 mm to 66 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
York
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
20
18
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Galway
9
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
15
14
12
10
York
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Galway
100
87
76
63
63
72
76
89
77
101
104
113
York
53
44
39
48
43
61
56
65
58
66
62
60
Daylight, hours per day
Galway
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
York
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Galway
2
2
4
5
6
5
4
5
4
3
2
2
York
2
3
4
5
6
5
6
5
4
3
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). York: 1991-2020 normals, Leeming (47.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGalwayYork
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
55 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
7 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
KrakowKRK
3 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
FaroFAO
2 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
ArrecifeACE
3 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
4 h 20 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
ReusREU
2 h 25 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
LBA · 39 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.

Before you go

MeasureGalwayYork
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 m25 m
Main airportShannon Airport (SNN)64 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsLeeds Bradford Airport (LBA)39 km from centre73 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureGalwayYork
City population83,456208,400
People per km²1,563766
Museums within 10 km424
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre2554
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 York 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.