Cardiff City v Swansea City: Who are the bigger club? AI decides | OneFootball

AI chatbot ChatGPT answers who is the bigger club out of Welsh giants Cardiff City and Swansea City.

The EFL is chock-full of hostile and famous rivalries stemming back decades, and even over a century ago, and one of the most fiercely fought is the South Wales Derby between Cardiff City and Swansea City.

Stemming as a result of simple geography between the two biggest sides in Wales competing in the English football pyramid, Cardiff and Swansea supporters have never got along.

From the early days of the Second Division of the Southern Football League through to the hooliganism of the 1980s and then a meeting in the Premier League in 2013, it is a storied rivalry that still grabs the attention of the neutral to this day.

The Bluebirds and the Jacks have now been separated for the 2025/26 season, following Cardiff’s relegation from the Championship last season, and the bragging rights are certainly with those at the Swansea.com Stadium.

However, that doesn’t necessarily make them the bigger of the two clubs, or does it? Football League World has asked AI chatbot ChatGPT as to who is the bigger of the two clubs.

AI decides who is bigger out of Cardiff and Swansea

When asked about which club is ‘bigger’, the AI chatbot ChatGPT was in two minds, giving reasons as to why both Cardiff and Swansea could be viewed as the bigger club.

According to ChatGPT, if you value ‘tradition and size’ as the biggest determining factor, then Cardiff should be viewed as bigger, but if you value ‘modern success and recent top-flight performance’, then Swansea would be viewed as the bigger.

The chatbot initially went through all the factors to decide when weighing up who is the bigger club: honours and achievements, stadium and fanbase, European football and recent top-flight presence.

Of the two teams, they both have a major trophy apiece, with Cardiff winning the 1927 FA Cup and Swansea winning the 2013 League Cup, albeit the Bluebirds have reached the FA Cup final on a couple of other occasions, in 1925 and 2008. Cardiff were also in the League Cup final in 2012, too, losing to Liverpool on penalties.

In the stadium and fanbase debate, the Cardiff City Stadium has a much larger capacity of 33,280, whilst the now Swansea.com Stadium is at 21,088. As AI states, Cardiff get the edge for this one, too, with the larger stadium and fanbase, albeit Swansea’s support is described as ‘smaller but passionate’.

The European football debate falls on the side of Swansea, with the Swans having reached the Round of 32 of the UEFA Europa League in the 2013/14 campaign, following their League Cup triumph. Cardiff, on the other hand, have only ever played in Europe as a result of Welsh Cup exploits.

In terms of their recent top-flight presence, AI sought to focus solely on the Premier League, with two seasons in total for Cardiff City, both, of course, ending in relegation, whereas the Swans enjoyed an impressive seven-year stint in the top-flight throughout the 2010s, playing some ‘attractive football’, as ChatGPT explains.

Cardiff have the historic edge, but Swansea have the modern arguments

ChatGPT may go about it by missing out a few key details and not presenting arguments in their fullest, but the overall conclusion is somewhere close to the truth.

With the bigger stadium that hosts Wales matches, and coming from the capital city, Cardiff were and are always likelier to have the bigger stadium in terms of prestige and fanbase in terms of size.

They also have the edge in terms of going back through history, and who first broke onto the scene in terms of a wider, national scale with their FA Cup exploits in the 1920s.

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However, 100 years on from there, Swansea now remain in the higher division and have enjoyed a lot more success in the last decade and a half or so, despite Cardiff’s occasional promotion to the Premier League.

It is a fairly mixed and even debate, albeit Swansea do shade it on the head-to-head with 34 victories to Cardiff’s 25 in the 78 competitive clashes that they have had.

As ChatGPT says, Cardiff are probably the bigger club in terms of their size and tradition, but Swansea have fought back to make it an even, and therefore always more intriguing, rivalry.