VacationSelector

Ljubljana or Riga?

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

Your match

Ljubljana
47
match

Wins on year-round weather and good for families with your weighting.

Riga
✓ Best match
53
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage 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.

LjubljanaRiga
Beaches & swimming. Riga leads by 40 points.40
LjubljanaRiga
Score040
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1057
Coast distance72 km12 km
Water distance12 km
Places to eat. Riga leads by 4 points.4
LjubljanaRiga
Score5559
Restaurants within 2 km of centre292470
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4033
Museums & heritage. Riga leads by 6 points.6
LjubljanaRiga
Score5561
Museums within 10 km2669
Museums within 2 km of centre2347
Share of museums within 2 km %8868
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Riga leads by 6 points.6
LjubljanaRiga
Score4551
Drinking venues within 4 km458584
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre284456
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6278
Nightclubs within 4 km2454
Nature & day trips. Riga leads by 4 points.4
LjubljanaRiga
Score4044
Protected land share 50 km %1310
Landscape blanket share 50 km %50
Land share of disc %10073
Park area within 2 km75 hectares68 hectares
Good for families. Ljubljana leads by 3 points.3
LjubljanaRiga
Score3835
Tourist attractions within 2 km127
Park area within 2 km75 hectares68 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Riga leads by 4 points.4
LjubljanaRiga
Score5862
Notable places within 2 km109137
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Riga leads by 4 points.4
LjubljanaRiga
Score7276
Price level global59.653.7
Daily budget€131€132
Year-round weather. Ljubljana leads by 4 points.4
LjubljanaRiga
Score5652
Monthly daytime high4.1 °C to 27.9 °C-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C
Monthly rainfall67 mm to 159 mm33 mm to 87 mm
Dry months03
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
Ljubljana
4
7
12
17
22
26
28
28
22
16
10
4
Riga
0
0
4
12
17
21
24
22
17
11
5
1
Sea temperature, °C
Ljubljana
No coastline within reach
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Rainfall, mm
Ljubljana
67
85
82
96
114
126
121
124
159
150
138
105
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Daylight, hours per day
Ljubljana
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Ljubljana
2
4
5
6
8
9
9
8
6
4
2
2
Riga
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Ljubljana: 1991-2020 normals, Ljubljana / Bezigrad (1.9 km from centre). Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLjubljanaRiga
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 5 m
no fares
LJU · 20 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 10 m
no fares
TRS · 84 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 10 m
€188-190
LJU · 20 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 25 m
no fares
LJU · 20 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZAG · 126 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
HelsinkiHEL
2 h 40 m
no fares
LJU · 20 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
DubrovnikDBV
1 h 10 m
no fares
ZAG · 126 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
SplitSPU
55 m
no fares
ZAG · 126 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 30 m
no fares
TRS · 84 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 45 m
€374-528
2 stops
LJU · 20 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

MeasureLjubljanaRiga
Official languageSloveneLatvian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation309 m6 m
Main airportLjubljana Jože Pučnik Airport (LJU)20 km from centre28 non-stop destinationsRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year21 days

By the numbers

MeasureLjubljanaRiga
City population284,293588,911
People per km²1,736
Museums within 10 km1412
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre6355
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Ljubljana 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. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.