VacationSelector

Manchester or Marseille?

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

Your match

Manchester
47
match

Wins on nightlife with your weighting.

Marseille
✓ Best match
57
match

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.

Scoreboard

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

ManchesterMarseille
Beaches & swimming. Marseille leads by 39 points.39
ManchesterMarseille
Score2867
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km1064
Coast distance27 km0 km
Water distance27 km0 km
Places to eat. Marseille leads by 7 points.7
ManchesterMarseille
Score6875
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8531,320
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3539
Museums & heritage. Marseille leads by 8 points.8
ManchesterMarseille
Score4250
Museums within 10 km2333
Museums within 2 km of centre1123
Share of museums within 2 km %4870
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Manchester leads by 14 points.14
ManchesterMarseille
Score6248
Drinking venues within 4 km1,029544
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre792454
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7783
Nightclubs within 4 km8230
Nature & day trips. Marseille leads by 1 points.1
ManchesterMarseille
Score3637
Protected land share 50 km %1715
Landscape blanket share 50 km %1713
Land share of disc %9956
Park area within 2 km63 hectares25 hectares
Good for families. Marseille leads by 12 points.12
ManchesterMarseille
Score3244
Tourist attractions within 2 km517
Park area within 2 km63 hectares25 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Marseille leads by 10 points.10
ManchesterMarseille
Score4858
Notable places within 2 km61111
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Marseille leads by 8 points.8
ManchesterMarseille
Score5462
Price level global84.973.7
Daily budget—€160
Year-round weather. Marseille leads by 21 points.21
ManchesterMarseille
Score5475
Monthly daytime high7.2 °C to 20.8 °C11.8 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall51 mm to 95 mm11 mm to 82 mm
Dry months06
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
Manchester
7
8
10
13
17
19
21
20
18
14
10
8
Marseille
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
30
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Manchester
7
6
7
9
11
14
16
17
16
14
11
9
Marseille
13
13
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
19
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Manchester
67
62
51
61
59
63
60
73
71
95
86
84
Marseille
47
30
29
51
38
28
11
26
82
72
76
41
Daylight, hours per day
Manchester
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Marseille
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Manchester
2
2
3
5
6
6
6
6
4
3
2
2
Marseille
5
6
8
8
10
11
12
11
9
6
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Manchester: 1991-2020 normals, Manchester Airport (14.8 km from centre). Marseille: 1991-2020 normals, Marseille / Marignane (20.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromManchesterMarseille
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 20 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
1 h 25 m
€110-119
MRS · 21 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
55 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
1 h 50 m
€65-134
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 35 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
MadridMAD
2 h 20 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
MunichMUC
2 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
NantesNTE
1 h 30 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
1 h 30 m
€72-162
MRS · 21 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 40 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 40 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 45 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 20 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
1 h 40 m
€86-123
1 stop
MRS · 21 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

MeasureManchesterMarseille
Official languageEnglishFrench
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation38 m0 m
Main airportManchester Airport (MAN)15 km from centre210 non-stop destinationsMarseille Provence Airport (MRS)21 km from centre125 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureManchesterMarseille
City population547,627886,040
People per km²4,7373,683
Museums within 10 km2827
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre6393
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Manchester or Marseille 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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. 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.