Ljubljana or Split?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on places to eat and sights concentration with your weighting.
Wins on beaches & swimming 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 Ljubljana if the trip is walking, museums and eating out: the notable places sit close together, the kitchens vary more, and summer highs reach 28°C with no sea involved.
Choose Split if swimming decides it: 87 beaches within reach, four months when the sea is warm enough to stay in, and a longer warm season at both ends of summer.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Split leads by 73 points.73
| Ljubljana | Split | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 73 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 4 |
| Beaches 10 km | 10 | 87 |
| Coast distance | 72 km | 0 km |
| Water distance | — | 0 km |
Places to eat. Ljubljana leads by 17 points.17
| Ljubljana | Split | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 55 | 38 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 292 | 268 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 40 | 15 |
Museums & heritage. Ljubljana leads by 3 points.3
| Ljubljana | Split | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 55 | 52 |
| Museums within 10 km | 26 | 18 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 23 | 16 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 88 | 89 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 3 | 4 |
Nightlife. Ljubljana leads by 4 points.4
| Ljubljana | Split | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 45 | 41 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 458 | 379 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 284 | 263 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 62 | 69 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 24 | 23 |
Nature & day trips. Ljubljana leads by 2 points.2
| Ljubljana | Split | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 40 | 38 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 13 | 9 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 5 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 62 |
| Park area within 2 km | 75 hectares | 30 hectares |
Good for families. Ljubljana leads by 12 points.12
| Ljubljana | Split | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 38 | 26 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 12 | 9 |
| Park area within 2 km | 75 hectares | 30 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 0 | 0 |
Sights concentration. Ljubljana leads by 16 points.16
| Ljubljana | Split | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 58 | 42 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 109 | 43 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Split leads by 8 points.8
| Ljubljana | Split | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 72 | 80 |
| Price level global | 59.6 | 48.5 |
| Daily budget | €131 | €138 |
Year-round weather. Split leads by 13 points.13
| Ljubljana | Split | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 56 | 69 |
| Monthly daytime high | 4.1 °C to 27.9 °C | 10.7 °C to 31 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 67 mm to 159 mm | 25 mm to 117 mm |
| Dry months | 0 | 2 |
Where they differ
Ljubljana has about as many restaurants near the centre as Split but a much wider range of kitchens. It also has about three times as many notable places within walking distance, so a day on foot covers more ground, plus more park space and more attractions close to the centre.
Split is the swimming trip: 87 beaches nearby against Ljubljana's 10, and four months when the sea sits at 21°C or above. It also runs warmer across the year, 11-31°C against Ljubljana's 4-28°C.
Where they are alike
Neither is chiefly a countryside base. Both sit in a landscape with a modest share of protected land, 13% around Ljubljana and 9% around Split, so days out are an option rather than the reason to come.
Heritage and nights out are close as well. Both have museums to visit and UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, 4 from Split and 3 from Ljubljana, and both have a similar number of bars and clubs, clustered near the centre.
Which traveller are you?
If swimming is the point of the trip, Split settles it: 87 beaches within reach and a sea at 21°C or above for four months, where Ljubljana has no swimming season at all.
For museum days and eating out, Ljubljana. Its notable places sit about three times as densely near the centre, and while restaurant numbers are similar, the range of kitchens is much wider.
Travelling with children, Ljubljana has the edge on attractions near the centre and roughly three times the park space. Neither city has a theme park within reach, so the day is streets, parks or, in Split, the water.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €131 for Ljubljana's country and €138 for Split's, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of either city. A capital and a heavily visited coastal city can each sit far from their own country average, by more than the gap between these two figures, so neither city can be called the cheaper one on this basis.
Split's beach advantage and its driest, hottest weeks fall in the same July and August window, which is also when the coast is most crowded. In Ljubljana, the warmest months are among the wettest, above 120mm each.
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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Ljubljana: 1991-2020 normals, Ljubljana / Bezigrad (1.9 km from centre). Split: 1991-2020 normals, Split / Marjan (0.9 km from centre).
Ljubljana's warm stretch is June to August, with highs of 26-28°C, though each of those months brings more than 120mm of rain, and September is wetter still at 159mm. Autumn is the heaviest part of the year for rain.
Split's window is longer and drier. May and June give warmth before the peak heat, July and August are the driest months of the year at 25-32mm with the sea at 24-25°C, and the warmth holds into early autumn.
Getting there
| Flying from | Ljubljana | Split |
|---|---|---|
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 2 h 5 m no fares LJU · 20 km | 2 h 30 m €88-160 SPU · 12 km |
| RomeFCO, CIA | 1 h 10 m no fares TRS · 84 km | 1 h 5 m €294 SPU · 12 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 1 h 25 m no fares LJU · 20 km | 1 h 45 m €169-224 SPU · 12 km |
| ViennaVIE | 1 h 0 m no fares ZAG · 126 km | 1 h 15 m €233-281 SPU · 12 km |
| AmsterdamAMS | 1 h 50 m no fares LJU · 20 km | 2 h 10 m €186-201 1 stop SPU · 12 km |
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 45 m €139-178 1 stop LJU · 20 km | 2 h 5 m €169-225 SPU · 12 km |
| DubrovnikDBV | 1 h 10 m no fares ZAG · 126 km | 55 m no fares SPU · 12 km |
| MunichMUC | 1 h 0 m no fares LJU · 20 km | 1 h 25 m no fares SPU · 12 km |
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 2 h 10 m €188-190 LJU · 20 km | 1 h 55 m no fares SPU · 12 km |
| ZurichZRH | 1 h 15 m no fares LJU · 20 km | 1 h 35 m €247-298 1 stop SPU · 12 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 2026-10, 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
| Measure | Ljubljana | Split |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | Slovene | Croatian |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CF230 V, 50 Hz | CF230 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 112 |
| Elevation | 309 m | 0 m |
| Main airport | Ljubljana Jože Pučnik Airport (LJU)20 km from centre28 non-stop destinations | Split Saint Jerome Airport (SPU)12 km from centre70 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 21 days | 14 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Ljubljana | Split |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 284,293 | 160,577 |
| People per km² | 1,736 | – |
| Museums within 10 km | 14 | 11 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 3 | 4 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 63 | 31 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | – | 4 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Ljubljana or Split somewhere new.