VacationSelector

Athens or Copenhagen?

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

Your match

Athens
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on value for money and year-round weather with your weighting.

Copenhagen
63
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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.

AthensCopenhagen
Beaches & swimming. Copenhagen leads by 6 points.6
AthensCopenhagen
Score4854
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km1417
Coast distance6 km1 km
Water distance6 km1 km
Places to eat. Copenhagen leads by 4 points.4
AthensCopenhagen
Score6973
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4311,183
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2537
Museums & heritage. Copenhagen leads by 2 points.2
AthensCopenhagen
Score7375
Museums within 10 km12283
Museums within 2 km of centre7851
Share of museums within 2 km %6461
Unesco sites within 50 km25
Nightlife. Athens leads by 14 points.14
AthensCopenhagen
Score8167
Drinking venues within 4 km2,7181,384
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354806
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5058
Nightclubs within 4 km13664
Nature & day trips. Copenhagen leads by 5 points.5
AthensCopenhagen
Score4550
Protected land share 50 km %55
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5039
Park area within 2 km128 hectares138 hectares
Good for families. Athens and Copenhagen are level on 71.
AthensCopenhagen
Score7171
Tourist attractions within 2 km6854
Park area within 2 km128 hectares138 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 1 points.1
AthensCopenhagen
Score7574
Notable places within 2 km291273
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 22 points.22
AthensCopenhagen
Score7452
Price level global55.887.8
Daily budget€125€214
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 19 points.19
AthensCopenhagen
Score7455
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C3.6 °C to 22.7 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm28 mm to 74 mm
Dry months73
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
Athens
13
14
17
21
27
32
34
35
30
24
19
15
Copenhagen
4
4
7
12
17
20
23
22
18
13
8
5
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Copenhagen
3
2
3
6
10
14
17
18
15
12
9
5
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Copenhagen
44
32
30
28
47
60
59
74
59
61
49
47
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Copenhagen
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Copenhagen
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Athens: 1991-2020 normals, Athens / Athenai / Pláka (2.2 km from centre). Copenhagen: 1991-2020 normals, Koebenhavn / Landbohoejskolen (2.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensCopenhagen
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 50 m
€55-95
CPH · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
1 h 50 m
€70-135
CPH · 8 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€202-223
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 25 m
€167-221
CPH · 8 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
3 h 0 m
€195-237
CPH · 8 km
OsloOSL, TRF
3 h 45 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
CPH · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€71-91
ATH · 20 km
2 h 0 m
€78-118
CPH · 8 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
3 h 35 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 20 m
€90-98
1 stop
CPH · 8 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
7 h 55 m
€460-501
1 stop
CPH · 8 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 5 m
€125-147
ATH · 20 km
4 h 20 m
no fares
CPH · 8 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
11 h 20 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
12 h 25 m
no fares
CPH · 8 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

MeasureAthensCopenhagen
Official languageGreekDanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Danish Krone (DKK)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCEFK230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation74 m14 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsCopenhagen Kastrup Airport (CPH)8 km from centre144 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensCopenhagen
City population643,452667,099
People per km²16,4997,339
Museums within 10 km8872
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km25
Distinct cuisines in the centre8282
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

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