VacationSelector

Riga or Thessaloniki?

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

Your match

Riga
53
match

Wins on museums & heritage and places to eat with your weighting.

Thessaloniki
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

RigaThessaloniki
Beaches & swimming. Thessaloniki leads by 15 points.15
RigaThessaloniki
Score4055
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km574
Coast distance12 km0 km
Water distance12 km0 km
Places to eat. Riga leads by 9 points.9
RigaThessaloniki
Score5950
Restaurants within 2 km of centre470640
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3315
Museums & heritage. Riga leads by 12 points.12
RigaThessaloniki
Score6149
Museums within 10 km6934
Museums within 2 km of centre4722
Share of museums within 2 km %6865
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Thessaloniki leads by 16 points.16
RigaThessaloniki
Score5167
Drinking venues within 4 km5841,407
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre456805
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7857
Nightclubs within 4 km5461
Nature & day trips. Thessaloniki leads by 21 points.21
RigaThessaloniki
Score4465
Protected land share 50 km %1025
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7383
Park area within 2 km68 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Thessaloniki leads by 6 points.6
RigaThessaloniki
Score3541
Tourist attractions within 2 km716
Park area within 2 km68 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Riga leads by 6 points.6
RigaThessaloniki
Score6256
Notable places within 2 km13798
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Riga leads by 2 points.2
RigaThessaloniki
Score7674
Price level global53.755.8
Daily budget€132€125
Year-round weather. Thessaloniki leads by 20 points.20
RigaThessaloniki
Score5272
Monthly daytime high-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C9.7 °C to 32.1 °C
Monthly rainfall33 mm to 87 mm21 mm to 56 mm
Dry months39
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
Thessaloniki
10
11
15
19
25
30
32
32
27
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Thessaloniki
14
13
13
15
19
23
26
27
25
21
18
15
Rainfall, mm
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Thessaloniki
35
32
38
36
44
30
23
21
33
41
38
56
Daylight, hours per day
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Thessaloniki
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Riga
No sunshine record
Thessaloniki
4
4
6
6
9
11
11
10
8
6
4
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre). Thessaloniki: 1991-2020 normals, Thessaloniki Airport (14 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRigaThessaloniki
AthensATH
3 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
1 h 0 m
€97-118
SKG · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
3 h 15 m
€95-156
SKG · 14 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 30 m
€119-127
SKG · 14 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 0 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
1 h 50 m
€125-175
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
HelsinkiHEL
1 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
BerlinBER
1 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 25 m
€156-243
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
3 h 10 m
€138-200
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 10 m
€188-242
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 40 m
€127-199
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 20 m
€208-315
1 stop
SKG · 14 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

MeasureRigaThessaloniki
Official languageLatvianGreek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation6 m6 m
Main airportRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinationsThessaloniki Macedonia International Airport (SKG)14 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days

By the numbers

MeasureRigaThessaloniki
City population588,911309,617
People per km²16,042
Museums within 10 km1231
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre5545
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Riga or Thessaloniki 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.