VacationSelector

Athens or Zagreb?

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 beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Zagreb
47
match

Wins on value for money 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.

AthensZagreb
Beaches & swimming. Athens leads by 48 points.48
AthensZagreb
Score480
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km148
Coast distance6 km117 km
Water distance6 km
Places to eat. Athens leads by 17 points.17
AthensZagreb
Score6952
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,431374
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2527
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 28 points.28
AthensZagreb
Score7345
Museums within 10 km12241
Museums within 2 km of centre7840
Share of museums within 2 km %6498
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Athens leads by 20 points.20
AthensZagreb
Score8161
Drinking venues within 4 km2,7181,009
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354571
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5057
Nightclubs within 4 km13663
Nature & day trips. Athens leads by 11 points.11
AthensZagreb
Score4534
Protected land share 50 km %59
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %50100
Park area within 2 km128 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 43 points.43
AthensZagreb
Score7128
Tourist attractions within 2 km687
Park area within 2 km128 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 15 points.15
AthensZagreb
Score7560
Notable places within 2 km291122
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Zagreb leads by 6 points.6
AthensZagreb
Score7480
Price level global55.848.5
Daily budget€125€138
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 12 points.12
AthensZagreb
Score7462
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C5.4 °C to 28.5 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm47 mm to 104 mm
Dry months70
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
Zagreb
5
8
13
18
23
27
29
28
22
17
11
6
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Zagreb
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Zagreb
47
48
49
63
76
90
87
85
104
91
88
63
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Zagreb
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Zagreb
2
4
5
6
8
9
9
9
6
4
2
2

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). Zagreb: 1991-2020 normals, Zagreb / Gric (0.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensZagreb
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
2 h 0 m
€153-254
ZAG · 11 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€174-212
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
MunichMUC
2 h 25 m
€214-254
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€202-223
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
ThessalonikiSKG
1 h 0 m
€103-128
ATH · 20 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
DubrovnikDBV
1 h 30 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
DohaDOH
4 h 10 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
10 h 15 m
€634
ATH · 20 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 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

MeasureAthensZagreb
Official languageGreekCroatian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation74 m127 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsZagreb Franjo Tuđman International Airport (ZAG)11 km from centre60 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensZagreb
City population643,452767,131
People per km²16,499
Museums within 10 km8827
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre8242
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

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