Edinburgh is the UK city AI recommends most. London comes second.

The headlines

What we found

• Edinburgh ranks No. 1, coming up in AI-generated UK city recommendations more often than any other city.
• London has the strongest average position, landing closer to the top than any other city when it's mentioned.
• Manchester lands in the top three far more often than Bristol, even though both are named in 90% of answers.

How we ran the study

We asked six AI models the same 20 questions about the best UK cities to visit, live in, or explore for food, culture, nightlife and more, then recorded every city each model listed in its top 10.

Each city earned points based on how often it was named and how close to the top of each list it landed. Those points were averaged across all six models into a single AI Recommendation Score out of 100, and cities were ranked from the strongest AI recommendation record to the weakest.

The top 10 UK cities AI recommends

AI Recommendation Score out of 100, followed by the share of answers naming each city and the share placing it in the top three. Every city was named by all six models, across all 10 themes.

• 1. Edinburgh — score 72 · named in 93% · top three in 62% · average position 3.3
• 2. London — score 65 · named in 69% · top three in 65% · average position 1.5
• 3. Manchester — score 63 · named in 90% · top three in 45% · average position 4.0
• 4. Bristol — score 55 · named in 90% · top three in 26% · average position 4.9
• 5. Glasgow — score 32 · named in 67% · top three in 9% · average position 6.2
• 6. Liverpool — score 31 · named in 66% · top three in 7% · average position 6.3
• 7. Birmingham — score 31 · named in 53% · top three in 14% · average position 5.1
• 8. Leeds — score 27 · named in 57% · top three in 7% · average position 6.3
• 9. York — score 26 · named in 48% · top three in 11% · average position 5.5
• 10. Bath — score 26 · named in 41% · top three in 18% · average position 4.7

1. Edinburgh

AI Recommendation Score: 71.6 | Mention rate: 93% | Top-three rate: 62% | Average position: 3.3

Edinburgh comes up in AI-generated UK city recommendations more often, and higher up the list, than any other city. It's named in 93% of all AI answers about the best UK cities, the highest mention rate recorded. When Edinburgh is named, it lands in the top three 62% of the time, with an average position of 3.3 out of ten list spots. Separately from the AI results, and not counted towards the score, Edinburgh drew about 2.56 million international overnight visitors in 2024.

2. London

London ranks second with an AI Recommendation Score of 65.2, well behind Edinburgh's 71.6. It turns up in 69% of AI answers, a lower mention rate than Edinburgh's despite its strong overall score. But when London is named it reaches the top three 65% of the time, and its average position of 1.48 is the strongest of any city. On actual tourism, London drew close to 21 million international overnight visitors in 2024, by far the largest count in the top five.

3. Manchester

Manchester comes third with a score of 63.1, close behind London. AI models bring it up in 90% of their answers, and 45.2% of those place it in the top three. Its average position of 3.99 puts it in the middle of the list rather than near the very top or bottom. Manchester recorded about 1.52 million international overnight visitors in 2024, a figure collected independently of the AI research.

4. Bristol

Bristol takes fourth with a score of 54.6. It appears in 90% of AI answers — matching Manchester — but cracks the top three in just 26.3% of them, with an average position of 4.92. International overnight visitors came to roughly 450,500 in 2024, the smallest figure in the top five.

5. Glasgow

Glasgow rounds out the top five with a score of 32.1, a sizeable step down from Bristol. AI names Glasgow 67% of the time, but just 8.5% of those answers put it in the top three, and its average position settles at 6.23. Glasgow's 2024 international overnight visitor count came in at about 735,900, a separate figure that plays no part in its score.

What our team says

A spokesperson from Go Vista AI commented: "AI chatbots tend to reach for the same handful of well-known names when asked for recommendations, the places that show up constantly in travel writing and online content they were trained on. That is genuinely useful for a well-covered city, but it means a brilliant, less-documented place can get overlooked again and again simply from having less written about it to draw from."

"Where a city lands in these answers says at least as much about how much has been written about it online as it does about how good a destination it actually is. Treat an AI's travel recommendations as a starting point shaped by the internet's existing coverage, not a verdict on which cities are objectively the best."

Why this matters for your brand

Cities and businesses are judged the same way. AI models recommend what they've seen written about most often and most confidently — not necessarily what's best.

If your competitors are covered more widely online, AI will name them first. If your business is thinly documented, it gets left off the list entirely.