VacationSelector

London or Thessaloniki?

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 places to eat and good for families with your weighting.

Thessaloniki
59
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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.

LondonThessaloniki
Beaches & swimming. Thessaloniki leads by 55 points.55
LondonThessaloniki
Score055
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km474
Coast distance43 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. London leads by 38 points.38
LondonThessaloniki
Score8850
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,317640
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4015
Museums & heritage. London leads by 23 points.23
LondonThessaloniki
Score7249
Museums within 10 km14834
Museums within 2 km of centre4922
Share of museums within 2 km %3365
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. London leads by 28 points.28
LondonThessaloniki
Score9567
Drinking venues within 4 km5,3271,407
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,443805
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4657
Nightclubs within 4 km31261
Nature & day trips. Thessaloniki leads by 25 points.25
LondonThessaloniki
Score4065
Protected land share 50 km %1625
Landscape blanket share 50 km %140
Land share of disc %9783
Park area within 2 km84 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 34 points.34
LondonThessaloniki
Score7541
Tourist attractions within 2 km8516
Park area within 2 km84 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. London leads by 33 points.33
LondonThessaloniki
Score8956
Notable places within 2 km64998
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Thessaloniki leads by 20 points.20
LondonThessaloniki
Score5474
Price level global84.955.8
Daily budget€125
Year-round weather. Thessaloniki leads by 9 points.9
LondonThessaloniki
Score6372
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 23.8 °C9.7 °C to 32.1 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 67 mm21 mm to 56 mm
Dry months19
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
Thessaloniki
10
11
15
19
25
30
32
32
27
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
London
No coastline within reach
Thessaloniki
14
13
13
15
19
23
26
27
25
21
18
15
Rainfall, mm
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Thessaloniki
35
32
38
36
44
30
23
21
33
41
38
56
Daylight, hours per day
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Thessaloniki
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
2
2
Thessaloniki
4
4
6
6
9
11
11
10
8
6
4
3

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). Thessaloniki: 1991-2020 normals, Thessaloniki Airport (14 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLondonThessaloniki
AthensATH
3 h 30 m
€258-349
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
1 h 0 m
€97-118
SKG · 14 km
HeraklionHER
3 h 50 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
LarnacaLCA
4 h 30 m
€255-274
LHR · 23 km
2 h 0 m
€105-145
SKG · 14 km
PaphosPFO
4 h 25 m
€182-270
LGW · 40 km
1 h 55 m
€82-135
SKG · 14 km
RhodesRHO
3 h 55 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
1 h 25 m
€127-152
SKG · 14 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
1 h 15 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
2 h 40 m
€127-199
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 5 m
€146-170
LHR · 23 km
2 h 55 m
€225-285
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
MunichMUC
1 h 45 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
2 h 10 m
€188-242
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
ChaniaCHQ
3 h 45 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 55 m
no fares
LTN · 44 km
2 h 20 m
€208-315
1 stop
SKG · 14 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

MeasureLondonThessaloniki
Official languageEnglishGreek
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 destinationsThessaloniki Macedonia International Airport (SKG)14 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureLondonThessaloniki
City population8,799,728309,617
People per km²5,59816,042
Museums within 10 km21531
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre11645
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow London or Thessaloniki 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.