VacationSelector

Liverpool or York?

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

Your match

Liverpool
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

York
41
match

Wins on museums & heritage 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 Liverpool if you want coast and evenings out: 34 beaches within reach, twice as many places to drink near the centre, and more park space.

Choose York if your trip is museums and a compact centre you can cover on foot, and you would rather have drier spring weather; there is much less going on after dark.

Scoreboard

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

LiverpoolYork
Beaches & swimming. Liverpool leads by 60 points.60
LiverpoolYork
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km342
Coast distance2 km50 km
Water distance2 km—
Places to eat. Liverpool leads by 6 points.6
LiverpoolYork
Score6054
Restaurants within 2 km of centre542361
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3231
Museums & heritage. York leads by 3 points.3
LiverpoolYork
Score4346
Museums within 10 km2318
Museums within 2 km of centre1216
Share of museums within 2 km %5289
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Liverpool leads by 18 points.18
LiverpoolYork
Score6143
Drinking venues within 4 km977450
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre651353
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6778
Nightclubs within 4 km7914
Nature & day trips. Liverpool leads by 25 points.25
LiverpoolYork
Score5833
Protected land share 50 km %—17
Landscape blanket share 50 km %016
Land share of disc %6095
Park area within 2 km81 hectares42 hectares
Good for families. Liverpool leads by 15 points.15
LiverpoolYork
Score5843
Tourist attractions within 2 km2513
Park area within 2 km81 hectares42 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km33
Sights concentration. Liverpool leads by 11 points.11
LiverpoolYork
Score5039
Notable places within 2 km6837
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Liverpool and York are level on 54.
LiverpoolYork
Score5454
Price level global84.984.9
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. York leads by 2 points.2
LiverpoolYork
Score5456
Monthly daytime high7.2 °C to 20.8 °C6.7 °C to 20.9 °C
Monthly rainfall51 mm to 95 mm39 mm to 66 mm
Dry months01
0255075100

Where they differ

Liverpool has 34 beaches nearby against York's 2, though neither has sea at 21°C or more. It also has about twice as much park space near the centre, twice as many places to drink, many times more nightclubs, and twice as many notable places within walking distance.

York's advantage is compactness: slightly fewer museums than Liverpool, but arranged more tightly around the centre, and both have 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach. York is also the drier city, with one month at 40mm or less where Liverpool has none.

Where they are alike

The weather is all but the same in both. Daytime highs run at about 7-21°C across the year, warmest in July, coolest in January, and annual sunshine is nearly identical. Neither offers a mild winter.

They are close on heritage and eating too. Each has 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and while Liverpool has more restaurants near its centre, the range of kitchens on offer is much the same in both.

Which traveller are you?

A family with children will fill days more easily in Liverpool, with about twice as many tourist attractions and twice as much park space near the centre, plus 34 beaches nearby. Both have 3 theme parks within reach.

Anyone planning evenings out should take Liverpool, which has roughly twice as many places to drink and many times more nightclubs than York, most of them near the centre in both cities.

A traveller after museums and a walkable core is better served by York, where the heritage sits tightly around the centre and the drier spring, one month at 40mm or less, suits long days on foot.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figures for these two are identical because they come from a national price level rather than anything measured in either city. No cost comparison between Liverpool and York is possible from this data, so treat what a trip costs as an open question and check it yourself.

Liverpool's beach advantage is more a matter of count than of use: the sea peaks at 17°C in August, so this is coast for walking rather than swimming, and only briefly. A warm month is also not a dry one, with Liverpool's October running to 95mm.

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
Liverpool
7
8
10
13
17
19
21
20
18
14
10
8
York
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
20
18
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Liverpool
7
6
7
9
11
14
16
17
16
14
11
9
York
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Liverpool
67
62
51
61
59
63
60
73
71
95
86
84
York
53
44
39
48
43
61
56
65
58
66
62
60
Daylight, hours per day
Liverpool
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
York
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Liverpool
2
2
3
5
6
6
6
6
4
3
2
2
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. Liverpool: 1991-2020 normals, Manchester Airport (47.4 km from centre). York: 1991-2020 normals, Leeming (47.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Liverpool's case is July and August: highs of 21°C and the sea at its warmest, 17°C, the only window in which the beaches are more than a walk. Its autumn is heavy, with October at 95mm.

York is drier through spring: March at 39mm where Liverpool has 51mm, and daytime highs match Liverpool's all year. May and June are its best months for walking, warm enough and with less rain than the coast.

Getting there

Flying fromLiverpoolYork
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
no fares
LPL · 12 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
BridgetownBGI
8 h 35 m
no fares
MAN · 48 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
Puerto del RosarioFUE
4 h 5 m
no fares
LPL · 12 km
4 h 10 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 15 m
no fares
LPL · 12 km
4 h 20 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 30 m
no fares
LPL · 12 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
ArrecifeACE
4 h 0 m
no fares
LPL · 12 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 40 m
no fares
LPL · 12 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 10 m
no fares
MAN · 48 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
AgadirAGA
3 h 45 m
no fares
MAN · 48 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 10 m
no fares
MAN · 48 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
MAN · 104 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.

Before you go

MeasureLiverpoolYork
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
Elevation70 m25 m
Main airportLiverpool John Lennon Airport (LPL)12 km from centre74 non-stop destinationsLeeds Bradford Airport (LBA)39 km from centre73 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureLiverpoolYork
City population513,441208,400
People per km²4,592766
Museums within 10 km3124
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre4954
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone–

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Liverpool 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. 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.