VacationSelector

Athens or Zurich?

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 value for money with your weighting.

Zurich
44
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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.

AthensZurich
Beaches & swimming. Athens leads by 48 points.48
AthensZurich
Score480
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km1423
Coast distance6 km632 km
Water distance6 km
Places to eat. Athens leads by 2 points.2
AthensZurich
Score6967
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,431974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2530
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 17 points.17
AthensZurich
Score7356
Museums within 10 km12276
Museums within 2 km of centre7837
Share of museums within 2 km %6449
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Athens leads by 27 points.27
AthensZurich
Score8154
Drinking venues within 4 km2,718676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5082
Nightclubs within 4 km13674
Nature & day trips. Athens leads by 8 points.8
AthensZurich
Score4537
Protected land share 50 km %516
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %50100
Park area within 2 km128 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 35 points.35
AthensZurich
Score7136
Tourist attractions within 2 km688
Park area within 2 km128 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 16 points.16
AthensZurich
Score7559
Notable places within 2 km291119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 39 points.39
AthensZurich
Score7435
Price level global55.8110.5
Daily budget€125€248
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 21 points.21
AthensZurich
Score7453
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm60 mm to 128 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
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Zurich
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. Athens: 1991-2020 normals, Athens / Athenai / Pláka (2.2 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
ThessalonikiSKG
1 h 0 m
€103-128
ATH · 20 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€202-223
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
HeraklionHER
1 h 0 m
€84-111
ATH · 20 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€97-139
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 30 m
€70-92
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 30 m
€286-308
ATH · 20 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
11 h 20 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
12 h 45 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 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

MeasureAthensZurich
Official languageGreekFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation74 m408 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensZurich
City population643,452452,421
People per km²16,4995,147
Museums within 10 km8863
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre8278
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 Zurich 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.