VacationSelector

Glasgow or Cardiff?

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, level with your weighting

Glasgow
48
match

Wins on nightlife and good for families with your weighting.

Cardiff
48
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 Cardiff if you want the outdoors half of the trip to work: more park space near the centre, more protected land within reach, 8 beaches and the sea 2km out, and the warmer, drier of the two.

Choose Glasgow if the evening matters more: roughly twice the bars and clubs, most of them central, with more packed into walking distance of the centre.

Scoreboard

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

GlasgowCardiff
Beaches & swimming. Cardiff leads by 10 points.10
GlasgowCardiff
Score3646
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km38
Coast distance3 km2 km
Water distance3 km2 km
Places to eat. Glasgow leads by 3 points.3
GlasgowCardiff
Score6360
Restaurants within 2 km of centre740541
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2932
Museums & heritage. Glasgow leads by 6 points.6
GlasgowCardiff
Score4539
Museums within 10 km3261
Museums within 2 km of centre136
Share of museums within 2 km %4110
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Glasgow leads by 15 points.15
GlasgowCardiff
Score6348
Drinking venues within 4 km1,078536
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre654395
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6174
Nightclubs within 4 km7335
Nature & day trips. Cardiff leads by 12 points.12
GlasgowCardiff
Score3850
Protected land share 50 km %1618
Landscape blanket share 50 km %1215
Land share of disc %9168
Park area within 2 km56 hectares88 hectares
Good for families. Glasgow leads by 9 points.9
GlasgowCardiff
Score4132
Tourist attractions within 2 km134
Park area within 2 km56 hectares88 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Glasgow leads by 8 points.8
GlasgowCardiff
Score5345
Notable places within 2 km8051
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Glasgow and Cardiff are level on 54.
GlasgowCardiff
Score5454
Price level global84.984.9
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Cardiff leads by 11 points.11
GlasgowCardiff
Score4354
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.9 °C7.7 °C to 20.2 °C
Monthly rainfall102 mm to 207 mm49 mm to 87 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Cardiff is the warmer city year-round, with daytime highs of 8-20°C against Glasgow's 7-19°C and more sunshine. It has about twice as much park space near the centre, a slightly larger share of protected land around it, 18% against 16%, and 8 beaches nearby against 3, the sea 2km out.

Glasgow is the stronger night out, with roughly twice as many places to drink and twice as many nightclubs, most of them central. It also packs about twice as many notable places into walking distance of the centre.

Where they are alike

Eating out is where the two are closest. Glasgow has somewhat more restaurants near the centre, but the range of kitchens is much the same, and in both the choice sits within walking distance.

They are close on heritage too: Cardiff has about twice as many museums, Glasgow's sit more tightly around the centre, and each has UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, 2 from Glasgow and 1 from Cardiff.

Which traveller are you?

If your trip is built around evenings out, Glasgow is the pick: roughly twice as many places to drink and twice as many clubs, most of them central, so you can move between them on foot.

For coast and countryside within reach, Cardiff: 8 beaches nearby, the sea 2km from the centre, 18% of the surrounding land protected, and more park space close in.

Families are a split. Glasgow has about three times as many attractions near the centre, useful in rain; Cardiff answers with parks, 2 theme parks within reach and drier, milder days.

What the numbers don't tell you

Nothing here supports a cost comparison. The value figure is a national price level, identical for the two by construction, and this dataset carries no daily budget for either city. Treat that axis as telling you nothing about which trip costs more.

Cardiff's beach advantage is real in count, but the sea peaks at 18°C in August and neither city has a month at 21°C or more, so swimming is a brief, bracing business. Warmer does not mean dry, either: neither has a month at 40mm of rain or less, and Cardiff's wettest stretch falls in autumn, outside its best months.

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
Glasgow
7
7
9
12
15
18
19
19
16
13
9
7
Cardiff
8
8
10
13
16
18
20
20
18
14
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Glasgow
8
7
7
8
10
13
15
15
14
12
11
9
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Rainfall, mm
Glasgow
207
170
147
102
103
111
129
145
132
185
190
205
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Daylight, hours per day
Glasgow
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Glasgow
1
2
3
4
5
4
4
4
3
2
2
1
Cardiff
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Glasgow: 1991-2020 normals, Glasgow Airport (11.5 km from centre). Cardiff: 1991-2020 normals, Cardiff-Wales Airport (14.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Cardiff is the steadier choice from May to September: highs reach 20°C in July and August, the sea gets to 18°C, and monthly rain stays near 54-66mm.

Glasgow peaks in the same weeks at 19°C, but its summer rain runs 129-145mm and the sea only reaches 15°C. April is its driest month at about 102mm, and midwinter brings around 205mm.

Getting there

Flying fromGlasgowCardiff
PalmaPMI
2 h 55 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
AntalyaAYT
4 h 40 m
€171-239
1 stop
GLA · 11 km
4 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
Las PalmasLPA
4 h 30 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
ArrecifeACE
4 h 15 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
DalamanDLM
4 h 30 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
4 h 10 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
MalagaAGP
3 h 10 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
AlicanteALC
3 h 0 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 50 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
6 h 55 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
BridgetownBGI
8 h 30 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
CWL · 15 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

MeasureGlasgowCardiff
Official languageEnglishEnglish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112 or 999
Elevation21 m41 m
Main airportGlasgow Airport (GLA)11 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureGlasgowCardiff
City population626,410383,536
People per km²1902,734
Museums within 10 km299
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre5455
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Glasgow or Cardiff 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). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.