VacationSelector

Riga or Valencia?

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 sights concentration and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Valencia
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on year-round weather and beaches & swimming 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.

RigaValencia
Beaches & swimming. Valencia leads by 27 points.27
RigaValencia
Score4067
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km5712
Coast distance12 km3 km
Water distance12 km3 km
Places to eat. Valencia leads by 19 points.19
RigaValencia
Score5978
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4701,995
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3333
Museums & heritage. Riga leads by 6 points.6
RigaValencia
Score6155
Museums within 10 km6959
Museums within 2 km of centre4726
Share of museums within 2 km %6844
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Valencia leads by 19 points.19
RigaValencia
Score5170
Drinking venues within 4 km5841,513
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre456957
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7863
Nightclubs within 4 km54108
Nature & day trips. Valencia leads by 9 points.9
RigaValencia
Score4453
Protected land share 50 km %1010
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7364
Park area within 2 km68 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Valencia leads by 7 points.7
RigaValencia
Score3542
Tourist attractions within 2 km712
Park area within 2 km68 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Riga leads by 10 points.10
RigaValencia
Score6252
Notable places within 2 km13778
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Riga leads by 5 points.5
RigaValencia
Score7671
Price level global53.760.8
Daily budget€132€122
Year-round weather. Valencia leads by 32 points.32
RigaValencia
Score5284
Monthly daytime high-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C16.8 °C to 30.6 °C
Monthly rainfall33 mm to 87 mm7 mm to 70 mm
Dry months38
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
Valencia
17
17
19
21
24
28
30
31
28
25
20
17
Sea temperature, °C
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Valencia
14
14
14
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Valencia
38
30
40
33
36
26
7
15
70
66
52
48
Daylight, hours per day
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Valencia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Riga
No sunshine record
Valencia
6
6
7
8
9
9
10
10
8
7
6
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre). Valencia: 1991-2020 normals, Valencia (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRigaValencia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 15 m
€80-167
VLC · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 25 m
€155-178
VLC · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
1 h 55 m
€103-131
VLC · 9 km
PalmaPMI
3 h 35 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
1 h 0 m
€32-53
VLC · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 15 m
€128-199
1 stop
VLC · 9 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 35 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
1 h 50 m
€51-87
VLC · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 50 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 0 m
€70-117
VLC · 9 km
HelsinkiHEL
1 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
4 h 15 m
€205-254
1 stop
ALC · 133 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 0 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 40 m
€155-215
1 stop
VLC · 9 km
MarrakechRAK
5 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 0 m
€72-115
VLC · 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

MeasureRigaValencia
Official languageLatvianSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation6 m15 m
Main airportRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinationsValencia Airport (VLC)9 km from centre107 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days

By the numbers

MeasureRigaValencia
City population588,911840,792
People per km²6,242
Museums within 10 km1246
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre5592
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 Valencia 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.