VacationSelector

Annecy or Lucerne?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Annecy
34
match

Wins on value for money and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Lucerne
33
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Annecy if the outdoors is the point: more protected land around it, more park space near the centre, and a warmer year, reaching 27°C in July.

Choose Lucerne if you want museums, notable places within walking distance of the centre and a little more after dark, and you will accept cooler, wetter summer months for it.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

AnnecyLucerne
Beaches & swimming. Annecy and Lucerne are level on 0.
AnnecyLucerne
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km916
Coast distance260 km669 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Lucerne leads by 1 points.1
AnnecyLucerne
Score4647
Restaurants within 2 km of centre343269
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2025
Museums & heritage. Lucerne leads by 10 points.10
AnnecyLucerne
Score3040
Museums within 10 km923
Museums within 2 km of centre513
Share of museums within 2 km %5657
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Lucerne leads by 8 points.8
AnnecyLucerne
Score2028
Drinking venues within 4 km140202
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre120151
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8675
Nightclubs within 4 km611
Nature & day trips. Annecy leads by 11 points.11
AnnecyLucerne
Score3625
Protected land share 50 km %207
Landscape blanket share 50 km %190
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km48 hectares29 hectares
Good for families. Lucerne leads by 9 points.9
AnnecyLucerne
Score2938
Tourist attractions within 2 km415
Park area within 2 km48 hectares29 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Lucerne leads by 12 points.12
AnnecyLucerne
Score2335
Notable places within 2 km1529
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Annecy leads by 27 points.27
AnnecyLucerne
Score6235
Price level global73.7110.5
Daily budget€160€248
Year-round weather. Annecy leads by 6 points.6
AnnecyLucerne
Score5953
Monthly daytime high5.1 °C to 26.8 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 94 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Annecy has the stronger outdoors: 20% of the land around it is protected against 7% around Lucerne, and about twice as much park space near the centre. The national price levels behind them, €160 a day in France and €248 in Switzerland, differ widely, though these are country figures.

Lucerne packs more into a short visit: about twice as many notable places within walking distance of the centre and roughly three times as many museums. Annecy's counterweight is 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Lucerne's 1.

Where they are alike

Neither is a swimming destination. Lucerne has 16 beaches nearby and Annecy 9, but neither gets a month with water at 21°C or more, so a dip is a brief affair rather than a reason to book.

Eating out is close to a tie: Annecy has somewhat more restaurants near the centre, Lucerne a somewhat wider range of kitchens. Nightlife is modest in both and clustered centrally, and both follow the same seasonal shape, cold winters and warm rather than hot summers.

Which traveller are you?

Walkers and day-trippers: Annecy. With 20% of the surrounding land protected against 7% around Lucerne, and more park space near the centre, time outdoors needs less arranging and less travelling.

Museum and city-sight travellers: Lucerne. Roughly three times as many museums, and about twice as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, mean a two-day visit on foot fills itself.

Families: it depends on the day you want. Lucerne has far more attractions near the centre for a compact itinerary; Annecy answers with more park space and 3 theme parks within reach against Lucerne's 1.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget, €160 against €248, is a national price level for France and Switzerland, not a measurement of either city. A heavily visited lakeside town can sit well above its country's average, and that gap can exceed the gap between the two figures.

The months that look best are also wet: neither city has a month at 40mm of rain or less, and Lucerne's warmest stretch is its wettest, so a strong summer does not promise dry days. The beach counts carry a similar catch, since the water never reaches a temperature most people would swim in for long.

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
Annecy
5
7
12
16
20
24
27
26
21
16
9
6
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Rainfall, mm
Annecy
71
55
61
66
77
81
77
80
87
94
87
88
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Annecy
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Annecy
2
3
6
6
7
8
9
8
6
4
2
2
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Annecy: 1991-2020 normals, Geneve-Cointrin (39 km from centre). Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Annecy is the better bet from June to August, with highs of 24-27°C, rainfall near 80mm and September still reaching 21°C, so the shoulder season stays usable for walking.

Lucerne is warmest in July and August at 24°C, but late spring and early summer are much wetter there, 119-128mm a month, so plan for indoor hours. Its drier stretch arrives in autumn, nearer 85mm, when days are cooler.

Getting there

Flying fromAnnecyLucerne
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€91-200
GVA · 38 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
€160-186
GVA · 38 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 25 m
€156-181
1 stop
GVA · 38 km
2 h 40 m
€188-233
ZRH · 49 km
PortoOPO
2 h 10 m
€127-171
1 stop
GVA · 38 km
2 h 30 m
€139-206
ZRH · 49 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€104-203
GVA · 38 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
MadridMAD
1 h 50 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 25 m
€65-78
GVA · 38 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 49 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 55 m
€147-338
GVA · 38 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 49 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€318-351
1 stop
GVA · 38 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 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

MeasureAnnecyLucerne
Official languageFrenchFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation418 m436 m
Main airportGeneva International Airport (GVA)38 km from centre140 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureAnnecyLucerne
City population132,11786,234
People per km²1,9752,963
Museums within 10 km114
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre4446

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Annecy or Lucerne 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. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

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.