VacationSelector

Berlin or Lucerne?

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

Your match

Berlin
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on sights concentration and nightlife with your weighting.

Lucerne
33
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.

BerlinLucerne
Beaches & swimming. Berlin and Lucerne are level on 0.
BerlinLucerne
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1716
Coast distance142 km669 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Berlin leads by 23 points.23
BerlinLucerne
Score7047
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,117269
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3325
Museums & heritage. Berlin leads by 39 points.39
BerlinLucerne
Score7940
Museums within 10 km20023
Museums within 2 km of centre8113
Share of museums within 2 km %4157
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Berlin leads by 48 points.48
BerlinLucerne
Score7628
Drinking venues within 4 km2,114202
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre719151
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3475
Nightclubs within 4 km13511
Nature & day trips. Berlin leads by 24 points.24
BerlinLucerne
Score4925
Protected land share 50 km %207
Landscape blanket share 50 km %160
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km141 hectares29 hectares
Good for families. Berlin leads by 38 points.38
BerlinLucerne
Score7638
Tourist attractions within 2 km5415
Park area within 2 km141 hectares29 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km51
Sights concentration. Berlin leads by 49 points.49
BerlinLucerne
Score8435
Notable places within 2 km48629
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Berlin leads by 25 points.25
BerlinLucerne
Score6035
Price level global75.9110.5
Daily budget€163€248
Year-round weather. Berlin leads by 7 points.7
BerlinLucerne
Score6053
Monthly daytime high3.7 °C to 25 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall29 mm to 76 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months30
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
Berlin
4
6
9
16
20
23
25
25
20
14
8
4
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Rainfall, mm
Berlin
49
44
39
29
52
53
76
53
47
39
42
45
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Berlin
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Berlin
2
2
4
6
7
8
8
7
5
4
2
1
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. Berlin: 1991-2020 normals, Berlin / Alexanderplatz (0.9 km from centre). Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBerlinLucerne
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 50 m
€65-126
BER · 19 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 40 m
€133-143
BER · 19 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 49 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 10 m
€137-154
BER · 19 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€102-136
BER · 19 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 20 m
€159-242
BER · 19 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 35 m
no fares
BER · 19 km
1 h 50 m
€84-103
ZRH · 49 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 15 m
€187-215
1 stop
BER · 19 km
1 h 25 m
€174-215
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 25 m
€101-133
BER · 19 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€737
BER · 19 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 5 m
no fares
BER · 19 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
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

MeasureBerlinLucerne
Official languageGermanFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation34 m436 m
Main airportBerlin Brandenburg Airport (BER)19 km from centre161 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBerlinLucerne
City population3,782,20286,234
People per km²4,2442,963
Museums within 10 km15814
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre8646

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Berlin 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.