VacationSelector

Riga or Sarajevo?

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

Your match

Riga
✓ Best match
53
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Sarajevo
44
match

Wins on value for money 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.

RigaSarajevo
Beaches & swimming. Riga leads by 40 points.40
RigaSarajevo
Score400
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km570
Coast distance12 km120 km
Water distance12 km
Places to eat. Riga leads by 21 points.21
RigaSarajevo
Score5938
Restaurants within 2 km of centre470227
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3317
Museums & heritage. Riga leads by 9 points.9
RigaSarajevo
Score6152
Museums within 10 km6938
Museums within 2 km of centre4733
Share of museums within 2 km %6887
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Riga leads by 10 points.10
RigaSarajevo
Score5141
Drinking venues within 4 km584416
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre456292
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7870
Nightclubs within 4 km5411
Nature & day trips. Riga leads by 24 points.24
RigaSarajevo
Score4420
Protected land share 50 km %102
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %73100
Park area within 2 km68 hectares37 hectares
Good for families. Sarajevo leads by 1 points.1
RigaSarajevo
Score3536
Tourist attractions within 2 km716
Park area within 2 km68 hectares37 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Riga leads by 1 points.1
RigaSarajevo
Score6261
Notable places within 2 km137131
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sarajevo leads by 12 points.12
RigaSarajevo
Score7688
Price level global53.737.4
Daily budget€132
Year-round weather. Sarajevo leads by 8 points.8
RigaSarajevo
Score5260
Monthly daytime high-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C4.2 °C to 28.3 °C
Monthly rainfall33 mm to 87 mm66 mm to 91 mm
Dry months30
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
Riga
0
0
4
12
17
21
24
22
17
11
5
1
Sarajevo
4
7
12
17
21
25
28
28
22
17
11
4
Sea temperature, °C
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Sarajevo
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Sarajevo
68
67
67
78
88
88
75
66
88
91
85
89
Daylight, hours per day
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Sarajevo
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Riga
No sunshine record
Sarajevo
3
3
5
5
6
8
8
8
6
5
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre). Sarajevo: 1991-2020 normals, Sarajevo-Bejelave (2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRigaSarajevo
HelsinkiHEL
1 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
3 h 5 m
€179-250
DBV · 144 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 35 m
€139-181
1 stop
SJJ · 7 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SJJ · 7 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
DBV · 144 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 30 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 15 m
€163-216
1 stop
SJJ · 7 km
OsloOSL, TRF
1 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
SJJ · 7 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 45 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
1 h 45 m
€105-169
SJJ · 7 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
1 h 50 m
€203-243
1 stop
SJJ · 7 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 15 m
€152-322
1 stop
SJJ · 7 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 0 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
1 h 15 m
€172-187
SJJ · 7 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

MeasureRigaSarajevo
Official languageLatvianCroatian, Serbian, Bosnian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Convertible Mark (BAM)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation6 m518 m
Main airportRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinationsSarajevo International Airport (SJJ)7 km from centre37 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days

By the numbers

MeasureRigaSarajevo
City population588,911275,524
People per km²1,947
Museums within 10 km1224
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre5535
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Riga or Sarajevo 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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.