VacationSelector

Ghent or Maastricht?

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

Your match

Ghent
✓ Best match
50
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.

Maastricht
41
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Ghent if you want the eating and drinking side of a trip: far more restaurants and bars near the centre, and about twice as many notable places within walking distance.

Choose Maastricht if you are heading outdoors or travelling with children: more of the surrounding land protected, 5 theme parks within reach, and slightly warmer summers at 24°C.

Scoreboard

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

GhentMaastricht
Beaches & swimming. Ghent leads by 26 points.26
GhentMaastricht
Score260
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km86
Coast distance32 km118 km
Water distance32 km—
Places to eat. Ghent leads by 22 points.22
GhentMaastricht
Score7048
Restaurants within 2 km of centre764338
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4922
Museums & heritage. Ghent leads by 5 points.5
GhentMaastricht
Score5853
Museums within 10 km2423
Museums within 2 km of centre2013
Share of museums within 2 km %8357
Unesco sites within 50 km55
Nightlife. Ghent leads by 19 points.19
GhentMaastricht
Score4930
Drinking venues within 4 km570223
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre446182
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7882
Nightclubs within 4 km2613
Nature & day trips. Maastricht leads by 3 points.3
GhentMaastricht
Score3437
Protected land share 50 km %719
Landscape blanket share 50 km %411
Land share of disc %87100
Park area within 2 km84 hectares33 hectares
Good for families. Ghent leads by 4 points.4
GhentMaastricht
Score5046
Tourist attractions within 2 km1915
Park area within 2 km84 hectares33 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km15
Sights concentration. Ghent leads by 10 points.10
GhentMaastricht
Score4636
Notable places within 2 km5532
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Ghent leads by 2 points.2
GhentMaastricht
Score6058
Price level global76.279.2
Daily budget€180€181
Year-round weather. Maastricht leads by 3 points.3
GhentMaastricht
Score5659
Monthly daytime high6.4 °C to 22 °C5.7 °C to 23.8 °C
Monthly rainfall35 mm to 79 mm41 mm to 84 mm
Dry months10
0255075100

Where they differ

Ghent has about twice as many restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens, plus roughly three times as many places to drink and twice as many nightclubs. It also packs about twice as many notable places within walking distance of the centre.

Maastricht turns outward: 19% of the surrounding land is protected against 7% around Ghent, and 5 theme parks lie within reach against Ghent's 1. It also runs warmer, peaking at 24°C against Ghent's 22°C.

Where they are alike

The closest match is cost. The national price estimates behind the two are almost identical, €180 for Belgium and €181 for the Netherlands, so the country price level gives no real reason to pick one over the other.

Museums and heritage run close too: similar museum counts, and 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach of each, though Ghent's museums sit tighter around the centre. Family appeal and the year-round weather are near-level as well, both starting the year at 6°C in January.

Which traveller are you?

Someone travelling for food and evenings out should take Ghent: about twice as many restaurants near the centre, a wider spread of kitchens, and roughly three times as many places to drink, most of them central.

Families can go either way. Maastricht has 5 theme parks within reach against Ghent's 1, while Ghent has about three times as much park space near the centre and somewhat more attractions on foot.

Walkers and day-trippers lean to Maastricht, where 19% of the surrounding land is protected against 7% around Ghent. Sightseers who prefer everything within walking distance stay in Ghent.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €180 and €181, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of Ghent or Maastricht. A city can sit well above or below its own country's average, by more than the gap between these two, so read them as Belgium against the Netherlands rather than as one city against the other.

The warmest months are also among the wettest: August is the warmest in Ghent and the wettest of the Maastricht year at 84mm. And beaches nearby do not mean swimming, with Ghent's sea reaching only 19°C at its August warmest.

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
Maastricht
6
7
11
15
19
22
24
24
20
15
10
6
Sea temperature, °C
Ghent
6
6
6
9
12
16
18
19
18
15
11
8
Maastricht
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Ghent
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Maastricht
64
58
55
41
58
69
73
84
58
65
62
74
Daylight, hours per day
Ghent
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Maastricht
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Ghent
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
2
Maastricht
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Ghent: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (44.9 km from centre). Maastricht: 1991-2020 normals, Maastricht Airport Zuid Limburg (10 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Ghent is the better pick in spring: April is its driest month at 35mm with highs of 13°C, and May stays fairly dry at 51mm and 17°C. Its summer is warm at 22°C but wet, and autumn wetter still.

Maastricht is the stronger summer, reaching 24°C in July and August, though August is its wettest at 84mm. September favours it too, at 20°C with 58mm against Ghent's 72mm.

Getting there

Flying fromGhentMaastricht
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EIN · 70 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 56 km
2 h 0 m
€148-192
1 stop
EIN · 70 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
EIN · 70 km
BudapestBUD
2 h 0 m
€51-84
CRL · 84 km
1 h 55 m
€106-231
EIN · 70 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 56 km
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 85 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 56 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
EIN · 70 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 85 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

MeasureGhentMaastricht
Official languageFrench, German, DutchDutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 911
Elevation12 m49 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)56 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsMaastricht Aachen Airport (MST)9 km from centre5 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureGhentMaastricht
City population272,657120,227
People per km²1,7282,000
Museums within 10 km3021
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km55
Distinct cuisines in the centre8333
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 Maastricht 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.