VacationSelector

Beijing or Cologne?

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

Your match

Beijing
53
match

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

Cologne
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips and sights concentration 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.

BeijingCologne
Beaches & swimming. Beijing and Cologne are level on 0.
BeijingCologne
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km040
Coast distance145 km256 km
Water distance
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Museums & heritage. Beijing leads by 3 points.3
BeijingCologne
Score6360
Museums within 10 km9547
Museums within 2 km of centre1527
Share of museums within 2 km %1657
Unesco sites within 50 km63
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 36 points.36
BeijingCologne
Score3571
Protected land share 50 km %353
Landscape blanket share 50 km %052
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km143 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Beijing leads by 5 points.5
BeijingCologne
Score7772
Tourist attractions within 2 km4143
Park area within 2 km143 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km126
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 3 points.3
BeijingCologne
Score5053
Notable places within 2 km6981
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Beijing leads by 19 points.19
BeijingCologne
Score7960
Price level global4975.9
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Beijing leads by 6 points.6
BeijingCologne
Score6660
Monthly daytime high2.2 °C to 31.8 °C6.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 163 mm48 mm to 81 mm
Dry months80
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
Beijing
2
6
13
21
27
31
32
31
27
19
10
4
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Rainfall, mm
Beijing
3
6
9
23
38
74
163
112
56
27
14
3
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Daylight, hours per day
Beijing
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Beijing
6
6
7
8
9
7
6
7
7
7
6
6
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Beijing: 1991-2020 normals, Beijing (11.1 km from centre). Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBeijingCologne
IstanbulIST, SAW
9 h 0 m
€475-645
PEK · 25 km
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 15 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
MunichMUC
9 h 45 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
ViennaVIE
9 h 25 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
BarcelonaBCN
11 h 0 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
BerlinBER
9 h 20 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 15 m
€136-255
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
10 h 10 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
LisbonLIS
12 h 5 m
no fares
PKX · 45 km
2 h 50 m
€203-369
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
RomeFCO, CIA
10 h 15 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
DohaDOH
7 h 55 m
€595-787
3 stops
PKX · 45 km
6 h 15 m
no fares
DUS · 41 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

MeasureBeijingCologne
Official languagePutonghuaGerman
CurrencyYuan Renminbi (CNY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsACI220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, ambulance 120, fire 119112
Elevation43 m59 m
Main airportBeijing Capital International Airport (PEK)25 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year6 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBeijingCologne
City population21,893,0951,024,621
People per km²1,3342,530
Museums within 10 km8340
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km63
Distinct cuisines in the centre2984

Where else could you go?

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