VacationSelector

London or Riga?

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

Your match

London
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on nightlife and good for families with your weighting.

Riga
53
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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.

LondonRiga
Beaches & swimming. Riga leads by 40 points.40
LondonRiga
Score040
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km4757
Coast distance43 km12 km
Water distance—12 km
Places to eat. London leads by 29 points.29
LondonRiga
Score8859
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,317470
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4033
Museums & heritage. London leads by 11 points.11
LondonRiga
Score7261
Museums within 10 km14869
Museums within 2 km of centre4947
Share of museums within 2 km %3368
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. London leads by 44 points.44
LondonRiga
Score9551
Drinking venues within 4 km5,327584
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,443456
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4678
Nightclubs within 4 km31254
Nature & day trips. Riga leads by 4 points.4
LondonRiga
Score4044
Protected land share 50 km %1610
Landscape blanket share 50 km %140
Land share of disc %9773
Park area within 2 km84 hectares68 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 40 points.40
LondonRiga
Score7535
Tourist attractions within 2 km857
Park area within 2 km84 hectares68 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. London leads by 27 points.27
LondonRiga
Score8962
Notable places within 2 km649137
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Riga leads by 22 points.22
LondonRiga
Score5476
Price level global84.953.7
Daily budget—€132
Year-round weather. London leads by 11 points.11
LondonRiga
Score6352
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 23.8 °C-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 67 mm33 mm to 87 mm
Dry months13
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
London
8
9
12
15
18
22
24
23
20
16
11
9
Riga
0
0
4
12
17
21
24
22
17
11
5
1
Sea temperature, °C
London
No coastline within reach
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Rainfall, mm
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Daylight, hours per day
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
2
2
Riga
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre). Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLondonRiga
HelsinkiHEL
2 h 50 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
AntalyaAYT
4 h 5 m
€144-189
LGW · 40 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 5 m
€146-170
LHR · 23 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 25 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
OsloOSL, TRF
2 h 5 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
TallinnTLL
2 h 45 m
no fares
STN · 49 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 45 m
€83-138
LGW · 40 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 35 m
€119-292
1 stop
LGW · 40 km
4 h 20 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 20 m
€128-183
1 stop
LGW · 40 km
5 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
TashkentTAS
6 h 50 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
4 h 55 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

MeasureLondonRiga
Official languageEnglishLatvian
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation4 m6 m
Main airportLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinationsRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days–

By the numbers

MeasureLondonRiga
City population8,799,728588,911
People per km²5,598–
Museums within 10 km21512
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre11655
Swim season, months above 21 °C–None

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow London 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). 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.