VacationSelector

Glasgow or York?

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

Your match

Glasgow
✓ Best match
48
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife with your weighting.

York
41
match

Wins on year-round weather 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.

The verdict

Choose Glasgow if you want the bigger night out and a dense centre: about twice as many places to drink and to eat near the middle of town, many more nightclubs, and more to see on foot.

Choose York if the weather matters more. It runs warmer in summer, up to 21°C in July, and drier all year, which makes autumn and winter visits easier.

Scoreboard

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

GlasgowYork
Beaches & swimming. Glasgow leads by 36 points.36
GlasgowYork
Score360
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km32
Coast distance3 km50 km
Water distance3 km—
Places to eat. Glasgow leads by 9 points.9
GlasgowYork
Score6354
Restaurants within 2 km of centre740361
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2931
Museums & heritage. York leads by 1 points.1
GlasgowYork
Score4546
Museums within 10 km3218
Museums within 2 km of centre1316
Share of museums within 2 km %4189
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Glasgow leads by 20 points.20
GlasgowYork
Score6343
Drinking venues within 4 km1,078450
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre654353
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6178
Nightclubs within 4 km7314
Nature & day trips. Glasgow leads by 5 points.5
GlasgowYork
Score3833
Protected land share 50 km %1617
Landscape blanket share 50 km %1216
Land share of disc %9195
Park area within 2 km56 hectares42 hectares
Good for families. York leads by 2 points.2
GlasgowYork
Score4143
Tourist attractions within 2 km1313
Park area within 2 km56 hectares42 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. Glasgow leads by 14 points.14
GlasgowYork
Score5339
Notable places within 2 km8037
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Glasgow and York are level on 54.
GlasgowYork
Score5454
Price level global84.984.9
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. York leads by 13 points.13
GlasgowYork
Score4356
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.9 °C6.7 °C to 20.9 °C
Monthly rainfall102 mm to 207 mm39 mm to 66 mm
Dry months01
0255075100

Where they differ

Glasgow has the stronger night out, with about twice as many places to drink and many times as many nightclubs, most of them near the centre. Its centre also holds about twice as many notable places within walking distance, and about twice as many restaurants. It has 3 beaches nearby against York's 2, though neither has warm sea.

York is warmer and drier, with daytime highs of 7-21°C across the year against Glasgow's 7-19°C, one month at 40mm or less where Glasgow has none, and more sunshine hours.

Where they are alike

Heritage is the closest call. Both have 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and both give you a full day or two indoors; Glasgow has more museums, but York's sit more tightly around the centre, so less walking between them.

They are also close on families and on days out of town. Each has a similar number of tourist attractions near the centre, and protected land makes up 17% of the area around York against 16% around Glasgow.

Which traveller are you?

If your trip is built around evenings out, Glasgow: about twice as many places to drink and to eat near the centre, many more nightclubs, and most of them close enough to walk between.

Travelling with children, York edges it: 3 theme parks within reach against Glasgow's 1, warmer summer days and less rain, though Glasgow has more park space near the centre.

For museums and old buildings the two are near-level. Glasgow has more of them and more notable places within walking distance; York packs a smaller set tightly around the centre, which suits a short stay.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figure is a national price level, identical for both by construction, so it tells you nothing about which city costs more. This dataset carries no daily budget for either, so no cost comparison between them is possible; assume you will have to price accommodation and eating out yourself.

Glasgow's edge on the coast reads better than it lives: the sea peaks at 15°C in August, so this is coastal walking rather than swimming, and 3 beaches nearby is not a beach holiday. Its warmest months are also among its wettest, so a July trip can be warm and rain-bound at once.

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
York
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
20
18
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Glasgow
8
7
7
8
10
13
15
15
14
12
11
9
York
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Glasgow
207
170
147
102
103
111
129
145
132
185
190
205
York
53
44
39
48
43
61
56
65
58
66
62
60
Daylight, hours per day
Glasgow
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
York
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Glasgow
1
2
3
4
5
4
4
4
3
2
2
1
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. Glasgow: 1991-2020 normals, Glasgow Airport (11.5 km from centre). York: 1991-2020 normals, Leeming (47.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Glasgow is at its best in July and August, when highs reach 19°C and the sea reaches 15°C, though those are also its wettest summer months, near 129-145mm. Spring is the drier half of its year, around 102mm, but cooler.

York works over a longer stretch, from May to September, warmest at 21°C and drier in every month, from 39mm in spring to 66mm in autumn. Winter suits neither, with highs of 7°C, but York is the safer choice for a shoulder-season trip.

Getting there

Flying fromGlasgowYork
MalagaAGP
3 h 10 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 55 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
AlicanteALC
3 h 0 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 30 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
4 h 20 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
ArrecifeACE
4 h 15 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
€38-45
GLA · 11 km
55 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
ReusREU
2 h 40 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
6 h 55 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
BridgetownBGI
8 h 30 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
AgadirAGA
4 h 0 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
3 h 50 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. 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

MeasureGlasgowYork
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 m25 m
Main airportGlasgow Airport (GLA)11 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsLeeds Bradford Airport (LBA)39 km from centre73 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureGlasgowYork
City population626,410208,400
People per km²190766
Museums within 10 km2924
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre5454
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone–

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Glasgow 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. 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 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.