VacationSelector

Berlin or Zurich?

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 good for families and sights concentration 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.

BerlinZurich
Beaches & swimming. Berlin and Zurich are level on 0.
BerlinZurich
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1723
Coast distance142 km632 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Berlin leads by 3 points.3
BerlinZurich
Score7067
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,117974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3330
Museums & heritage. Berlin leads by 23 points.23
BerlinZurich
Score7956
Museums within 10 km20076
Museums within 2 km of centre8137
Share of museums within 2 km %4149
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Berlin leads by 22 points.22
BerlinZurich
Score7654
Drinking venues within 4 km2,114676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre719553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3482
Nightclubs within 4 km13574
Nature & day trips. Berlin leads by 12 points.12
BerlinZurich
Score4937
Protected land share 50 km %2016
Landscape blanket share 50 km %169
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km141 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Berlin leads by 40 points.40
BerlinZurich
Score7636
Tourist attractions within 2 km548
Park area within 2 km141 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km52
Sights concentration. Berlin leads by 25 points.25
BerlinZurich
Score8459
Notable places within 2 km486119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Berlin leads by 25 points.25
BerlinZurich
Score6035
Price level global75.9110.5
Daily budget€163€248
Year-round weather. Berlin leads by 7 points.7
BerlinZurich
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
Zurich
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
Zurich
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
Zurich
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
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. Berlin: 1991-2020 normals, Berlin / Alexanderplatz (0.9 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBerlinZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 50 m
€65-126
BER · 19 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 40 m
€133-143
BER · 19 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 10 m
€137-154
BER · 19 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€102-136
BER · 19 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 20 m
€159-242
BER · 19 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 35 m
no fares
BER · 19 km
1 h 50 m
€84-103
ZRH · 9 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 15 m
€187-215
1 stop
BER · 19 km
1 h 25 m
€174-215
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 25 m
€101-133
BER · 19 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€737
BER · 19 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 5 m
no fares
BER · 19 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
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

MeasureBerlinZurich
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 m408 m
Main airportBerlin Brandenburg Airport (BER)19 km from centre161 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureBerlinZurich
City population3,782,202452,421
People per km²4,2445,147
Museums within 10 km15863
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre8678

Where else could you go?

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