VacationSelector

Paris or Riga?

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

Your match

Paris
✓ Best match
67
match

Wins on good for families and nightlife 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.

ParisRiga
Beaches & swimming. Riga leads by 40 points.40
ParisRiga
Score040
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km257
Coast distance149 km12 km
Water distance12 km
Places to eat. Paris leads by 31 points.31
ParisRiga
Score9059
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4,732470
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3333
Museums & heritage. Paris leads by 15 points.15
ParisRiga
Score7661
Museums within 10 km18569
Museums within 2 km of centre6547
Share of museums within 2 km %3568
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Paris leads by 37 points.37
ParisRiga
Score8851
Drinking venues within 4 km3,796584
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,694456
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4578
Nightclubs within 4 km20154
Nature & day trips. Paris leads by 4 points.4
ParisRiga
Score4844
Protected land share 50 km %2810
Landscape blanket share 50 km %260
Land share of disc %10073
Park area within 2 km82 hectares68 hectares
Good for families. Paris leads by 40 points.40
ParisRiga
Score7535
Tourist attractions within 2 km897
Park area within 2 km82 hectares68 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Paris leads by 32 points.32
ParisRiga
Score9462
Notable places within 2 km865137
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Riga leads by 14 points.14
ParisRiga
Score6276
Price level global73.753.7
Daily budget€160€132
Year-round weather. Paris leads by 14 points.14
ParisRiga
Score6652
Monthly daytime high7.8 °C to 26 °C-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 75 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
Paris
8
9
13
17
20
24
26
26
22
17
11
8
Riga
0
0
4
12
17
21
24
22
17
11
5
1
Sea temperature, °C
Paris
No coastline within reach
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Rainfall, mm
Paris
45
38
41
45
75
51
58
54
51
55
54
62
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Daylight, hours per day
Paris
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Paris: 1991-2020 normals, Paris-Montsouris (4.6 km from centre). Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromParisRiga
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€63-103
CDG · 22 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
HelsinkiHEL
2 h 55 m
no fares
CDG · 22 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€61-89
CDG · 22 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 10 m
€122-134
CDG · 22 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 10 m
€188-212
CDG · 22 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 15 m
€152-378
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 55 m
€153-171
CDG · 22 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 50 m
€150-199
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 50 m
€292-389
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
5 h 45 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
TashkentTAS
6 h 40 m
no fares
CDG · 22 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

MeasureParisRiga
Official languageFrenchLatvian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation27 m6 m
Main airportCharles de Gaulle International Airport (CDG)22 km from centre277 non-stop destinationsRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days

By the numbers

MeasureParisRiga
City population2,103,778588,911
People per km²19,960
Museums within 10 km25112
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre16955
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Paris 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.