VacationSelector

Manchester or Riga?

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 and places to eat with your weighting.

Riga
✓ Best match
53
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage 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.

ManchesterRiga
Beaches & swimming. Riga leads by 12 points.12
ManchesterRiga
Score2840
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1057
Coast distance27 km12 km
Water distance27 km12 km
Places to eat. Manchester leads by 9 points.9
ManchesterRiga
Score6859
Restaurants within 2 km of centre853470
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3533
Museums & heritage. Riga leads by 19 points.19
ManchesterRiga
Score4261
Museums within 10 km2369
Museums within 2 km of centre1147
Share of museums within 2 km %4868
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Manchester leads by 11 points.11
ManchesterRiga
Score6251
Drinking venues within 4 km1,029584
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre792456
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7778
Nightclubs within 4 km8254
Nature & day trips. Riga leads by 8 points.8
ManchesterRiga
Score3644
Protected land share 50 km %1710
Landscape blanket share 50 km %170
Land share of disc %9973
Park area within 2 km63 hectares68 hectares
Good for families. Riga leads by 3 points.3
ManchesterRiga
Score3235
Tourist attractions within 2 km57
Park area within 2 km63 hectares68 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Riga leads by 14 points.14
ManchesterRiga
Score4862
Notable places within 2 km61137
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Riga leads by 22 points.22
ManchesterRiga
Score5476
Price level global84.953.7
Daily budget€132
Year-round weather. Manchester leads by 2 points.2
ManchesterRiga
Score5452
Monthly daytime high7.2 °C to 20.8 °C-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C
Monthly rainfall51 mm to 95 mm33 mm to 87 mm
Dry months03
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
Riga
0
0
4
12
17
21
24
22
17
11
5
1
Sea temperature, °C
Manchester
7
6
7
9
11
14
16
17
16
14
11
9
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Rainfall, mm
Manchester
67
62
51
61
59
63
60
73
71
95
86
84
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Daylight, hours per day
Manchester
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Manchester
2
2
3
5
6
6
6
6
4
3
2
2
Riga
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Manchester: 1991-2020 normals, Manchester Airport (14.8 km from centre). Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromManchesterRiga
OsloOSL, TRF
2 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
55 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
HelsinkiHEL
2 h 50 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 50 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 20 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
BerlinBER
1 h 55 m
€352-493
2 stops
MAN · 15 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 20 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
TallinnTLL
2 h 50 m
no fares
BHX · 119 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 35 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
5 h 5 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 2026-09, 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

MeasureManchesterRiga
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
Elevation38 m6 m
Main airportManchester Airport (MAN)15 km from centre210 non-stop destinationsRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days

By the numbers

MeasureManchesterRiga
City population547,627588,911
People per km²4,737
Museums within 10 km2812
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre6355
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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