VacationSelector

Ghent or Lyon?

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

Ghent
50
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Lyon
52
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife 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.

GhentLyon
Beaches & swimming. Ghent leads by 26 points.26
GhentLyon
Score260
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km826
Coast distance32 km253 km
Water distance32 km
Places to eat. Lyon leads by 9 points.9
GhentLyon
Score7079
Restaurants within 2 km of centre7641,691
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4940
Museums & heritage. Ghent leads by 3 points.3
GhentLyon
Score5855
Museums within 10 km2453
Museums within 2 km of centre2025
Share of museums within 2 km %8347
Unesco sites within 50 km52
Nightlife. Lyon leads by 9 points.9
GhentLyon
Score4958
Drinking venues within 4 km570866
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre446611
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7871
Nightclubs within 4 km2647
Nature & day trips. Ghent leads by 1 points.1
GhentLyon
Score3433
Protected land share 50 km %76
Landscape blanket share 50 km %46
Land share of disc %87100
Park area within 2 km84 hectares120 hectares
Good for families. Lyon leads by 9 points.9
GhentLyon
Score5059
Tourist attractions within 2 km1925
Park area within 2 km84 hectares120 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Lyon leads by 8 points.8
GhentLyon
Score4654
Notable places within 2 km5586
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lyon leads by 2 points.2
GhentLyon
Score6062
Price level global76.273.7
Daily budget€180€160
Year-round weather. Lyon leads by 8 points.8
GhentLyon
Score5664
Monthly daytime high6.4 °C to 22 °C7 °C to 28 °C
Monthly rainfall35 mm to 79 mm43 mm to 101 mm
Dry months10
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
Ghent
6
7
10
13
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Lyon
7
9
14
17
21
26
28
28
23
18
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Ghent
6
6
6
9
12
16
18
19
18
15
11
8
Lyon
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Ghent
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Daylight, hours per day
Ghent
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Lyon
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Ghent
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
2
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
6
4
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Ghent: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (44.9 km from centre). Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGhentLyon
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 56 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 56 km
3 h 0 m
€167-217
LYS · 20 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 56 km
1 h 20 m
€70-92
LYS · 20 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
1 h 30 m
€79-99
LYS · 20 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 56 km
2 h 20 m
€109-165
LYS · 20 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
€138-162
2 stops
BRU · 56 km
1 h 20 m
€195-211
2 stops
LYS · 20 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
6 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 10 m
€421
BRU · 56 km
7 h 35 m
€446-565
1 stop
LYS · 20 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 111 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

MeasureGhentLyon
Official languageFrench, German, DutchFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation12 m160 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)56 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureGhentLyon
City population272,657519,127
People per km²1,72810,838
Museums within 10 km3042
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km52
Distinct cuisines in the centre83148
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Ghent or Lyon 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.