VacationSelector

Ghent or Riga?

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

Your match

Ghent
50
match

Wins on good for families and places to eat with your weighting.

Riga
✓ Best match
53
match

Wins on sights concentration and value for money 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.

GhentRiga
Beaches & swimming. Riga leads by 14 points.14
GhentRiga
Score2640
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km857
Coast distance32 km12 km
Water distance32 km12 km
Places to eat. Ghent leads by 11 points.11
GhentRiga
Score7059
Restaurants within 2 km of centre764470
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4933
Museums & heritage. Riga leads by 3 points.3
GhentRiga
Score5861
Museums within 10 km2469
Museums within 2 km of centre2047
Share of museums within 2 km %8368
Unesco sites within 50 km51
Nightlife. Riga leads by 2 points.2
GhentRiga
Score4951
Drinking venues within 4 km570584
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre446456
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7878
Nightclubs within 4 km2654
Nature & day trips. Riga leads by 10 points.10
GhentRiga
Score3444
Protected land share 50 km %710
Landscape blanket share 50 km %40
Land share of disc %8773
Park area within 2 km84 hectares68 hectares
Good for families. Ghent leads by 15 points.15
GhentRiga
Score5035
Tourist attractions within 2 km197
Park area within 2 km84 hectares68 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Riga leads by 16 points.16
GhentRiga
Score4662
Notable places within 2 km55137
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Riga leads by 16 points.16
GhentRiga
Score6076
Price level global76.253.7
Daily budget€180€132
Year-round weather. Ghent leads by 4 points.4
GhentRiga
Score5652
Monthly daytime high6.4 °C to 22 °C-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C
Monthly rainfall35 mm to 79 mm33 mm to 87 mm
Dry months13
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
Riga
0
0
4
12
17
21
24
22
17
11
5
1
Sea temperature, °C
Ghent
6
6
6
9
12
16
18
19
18
15
11
8
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Rainfall, mm
Ghent
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Daylight, hours per day
Ghent
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Ghent
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
2
Riga
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Ghent: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (44.9 km from centre). Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGhentRiga
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
€138-162
2 stops
BRU · 56 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 56 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 10 m
€63-138
BRU · 56 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 45 m
€93-156
BRU · 56 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
OsloOSL, TRF
2 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 56 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 56 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
HelsinkiHEL
2 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
5 h 45 m
no fares
RIX · 9 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

MeasureGhentRiga
Official languageFrench, German, DutchLatvian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation12 m6 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)56 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days–

By the numbers

MeasureGhentRiga
City population272,657588,911
People per km²1,728–
Museums within 10 km3012
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km51
Distinct cuisines in the centre8355
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Ghent or Riga 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.