VacationSelector

Riga or Valletta?

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 value for money and nightlife with your weighting.

Valletta
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

RigaValletta
Beaches & swimming. Valletta leads by 37 points.37
RigaValletta
Score4077
Swim season months06
Beaches 10 km5722
Coast distance12 km0 km
Water distance12 km0 km
Places to eat. Riga leads by 1 points.1
RigaValletta
Score5958
Restaurants within 2 km of centre470416
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3335
Museums & heritage. Riga and Valletta are level on 61.
RigaValletta
Score6161
Museums within 10 km6946
Museums within 2 km of centre4729
Share of museums within 2 km %6863
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Riga leads by 4 points.4
RigaValletta
Score5147
Drinking venues within 4 km584522
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre456250
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7848
Nightclubs within 4 km5427
Nature & day trips. Valletta leads by 2 points.2
RigaValletta
Score4446
Protected land share 50 km %10
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %736
Park area within 2 km68 hectares24 hectares
Good for families. Valletta leads by 11 points.11
RigaValletta
Score3546
Tourist attractions within 2 km732
Park area within 2 km68 hectares24 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Riga leads by 1 points.1
RigaValletta
Score6261
Notable places within 2 km137133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Riga leads by 7 points.7
RigaValletta
Score7669
Price level global53.762.8
Daily budget€132€129
Year-round weather. Valletta leads by 27 points.27
RigaValletta
Score5279
Monthly daytime high-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C15.7 °C to 31.9 °C
Monthly rainfall33 mm to 87 mm0 mm to 90 mm
Dry months36
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
Valletta
16
16
17
20
24
29
32
32
29
25
21
17
Sea temperature, °C
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Valletta
16
15
15
16
19
22
25
27
26
24
21
18
Rainfall, mm
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Valletta
80
72
39
19
10
5
0
10
63
74
90
85
Daylight, hours per day
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Valletta
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Riga
No sunshine record
Valletta
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
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). Valletta: 1991-2020 normals, Luqa (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRigaValletta
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
3 h 10 m
€91-131
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 50 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
1 h 30 m
€37-71
MLA · 6 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 35 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 5 m
€62-92
MLA · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 45 m
€99-132
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 0 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 15 m
€111-180
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 20 m
€165-259
MLA · 6 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 45 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 15 m
€177-222
MLA · 6 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 45 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
MLA · 6 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 2026-09, 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

MeasureRigaValletta
Official languageLatvianEnglish, Maltese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation6 m56 m
Main airportRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinationsMalta International Airport (MLA)6 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days

By the numbers

MeasureRigaValletta
City population588,9116,444
People per km²8,055
Museums within 10 km1215
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre5555
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone6 months

Where else could you go?

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