VacationSelector

London or York?

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 sights concentration with your weighting.

York
41
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose London if you want the evenings to run late and the eating to vary: many times as many places to drink and eat near the centre, and far more to see within walking distance.

Choose York if you want a small city you can cross on foot, with museums close together and nightlife concentrated rather than scattered. It runs cooler, topping out near 21°C in July.

Scoreboard

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

LondonYork
Beaches & swimming. London and York are level on 0.
LondonYork
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km472
Coast distance43 km50 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. London leads by 34 points.34
LondonYork
Score8854
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,317361
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4031
Museums & heritage. London leads by 26 points.26
LondonYork
Score7246
Museums within 10 km14818
Museums within 2 km of centre4916
Share of museums within 2 km %3389
Unesco sites within 50 km42
Nightlife. London leads by 52 points.52
LondonYork
Score9543
Drinking venues within 4 km5,327450
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,443353
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4678
Nightclubs within 4 km31214
Nature & day trips. London leads by 7 points.7
LondonYork
Score4033
Protected land share 50 km %1617
Landscape blanket share 50 km %1416
Land share of disc %9795
Park area within 2 km84 hectares42 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 32 points.32
LondonYork
Score7543
Tourist attractions within 2 km8513
Park area within 2 km84 hectares42 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km33
Sights concentration. London leads by 50 points.50
LondonYork
Score8939
Notable places within 2 km64937
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. London and York are level on 54.
LondonYork
Score5454
Price level global84.984.9
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. London leads by 7 points.7
LondonYork
Score6356
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 23.8 °C6.7 °C to 20.9 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 67 mm39 mm to 66 mm
Dry months11
0255075100

Where they differ

London has many times as many restaurants near the centre, and a wider range of kitchens. Nightlife is on another scale, with many times as many bars and clubs, and many times as many notable places within walking distance. It also holds many times as many museums, and 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against York's 2.

York concentrates what it has: museums sit tightly around the centre and most of its drinking places are near it, so an evening needs no transport; in London about half sits further out.

Where they are alike

Neither city is a swimming destination. Beaches exist within reach of both, but neither has a month with sea at 21°C or more, so time in the water is not what either trip is for.

The weather is close as well: daytime highs run 8-24°C in London and 7-21°C in York, and each has a single month with rain of 40mm or less. Protected countryside covers a near identical share of the land around both.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone building a trip around evenings out should take London: many times as many bars and clubs, many times as many restaurants near the centre, and a wider spread of kitchens.

For a short heritage break on foot, York works: its museums sit tightly around the centre, and most of its drinking places are there too, so an evening and a day need no transport.

Families get more from London: many times as many attractions near the centre and about twice as much park space, though both have 3 theme parks within reach and neither offers usable swimming.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figure here is a national price level, identical for both cities by construction, so the comparison between London and York on value carries no information. The dataset holds no daily budget for either city, so no cost comparison is possible at all.

Beach counts mislead too: London has 47 beaches within reach, yet neither city has a month with sea at 21°C or more, so those are places to walk, not swim. Protected land covers a near equal share around both, and London's edge on nature rests mostly on park space near the centre, which is city greenery rather than open country.

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
York
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
20
18
14
10
7
Rainfall, mm
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
York
53
44
39
48
43
61
56
65
58
66
62
60
Daylight, hours per day
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
York
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
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. London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre). York: 1991-2020 normals, Leeming (47.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

London is at its best from June to September, when highs run 22-24°C and rain sits around 46-53mm. Winter is the weak end, 8°C in January with 59mm, and October and November are the wettest months at 64-67mm.

York runs cooler throughout, topping out at 21°C in July. May is its best-balanced month, 16°C with 43mm, and March is drier still at 39mm. June and August are warm but wet, 61mm and 65mm.

Getting there

Flying fromLondonYork
MalagaAGP
2 h 35 m
€119-292
1 stop
LGW · 40 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
€79-116
LGW · 40 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 20 m
€66-100
LGW · 40 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
IbizaIBZ
2 h 15 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
FaroFAO
2 h 40 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 5 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
4 h 20 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
BridgetownBGI
8 h 35 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
AgadirAGA
3 h 30 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 25 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 15 m
no fares
LHR · 23 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. 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

MeasureLondonYork
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
Elevation4 m25 m
Main airportLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinationsLeeds Bradford Airport (LBA)39 km from centre73 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureLondonYork
City population8,799,728208,400
People per km²5,598766
Museums within 10 km21524
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km42
Distinct cuisines in the centre11654

Where else could you go?

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