VacationSelector

Biarritz or Cologne?

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

Your match

Biarritz
38
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Cologne
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on good for families and nightlife 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.

BiarritzCologne
Beaches & swimming. Biarritz leads by 67 points.67
BiarritzCologne
Score670
Swim season months20
Beaches 10 km4340
Coast distance1 km256 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 40 points.40
BiarritzCologne
Score3272
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2071,142
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1335
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 29 points.29
BiarritzCologne
Score3160
Museums within 10 km1647
Museums within 2 km of centre527
Share of museums within 2 km %3157
Unesco sites within 50 km23
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 49 points.49
BiarritzCologne
Score1564
Drinking venues within 4 km1051,107
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre82727
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7866
Nightclubs within 4 km690
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 41 points.41
BiarritzCologne
Score3071
Protected land share 50 km %653
Landscape blanket share 50 km %052
Land share of disc %64100
Park area within 2 km32 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 51 points.51
BiarritzCologne
Score2172
Tourist attractions within 2 km243
Park area within 2 km32 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km16
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 30 points.30
BiarritzCologne
Score2353
Notable places within 2 km1581
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Biarritz leads by 2 points.2
BiarritzCologne
Score6260
Price level global73.775.9
Daily budget€160€163
Year-round weather. Biarritz leads by 5 points.5
BiarritzCologne
Score6560
Monthly daytime high13.1 °C to 25.8 °C6.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall97 mm to 224 mm48 mm to 81 mm
Dry months00
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
Biarritz
13
14
16
18
21
23
25
26
24
21
16
14
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Biarritz
13
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Biarritz
166
143
127
147
133
106
97
110
146
166
224
179
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Daylight, hours per day
Biarritz
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Biarritz
3
3
5
5
6
6
7
7
6
4
3
2
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. Biarritz: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Fuenterrabia (24.4 km from centre). Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBiarritzCologne
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 111 km
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 111 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 3 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 3 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 111 km
55 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 23 km
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
3 h 10 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
4 h 30 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
AlicanteALC
1 h 20 m
€81-137
BIO · 111 km
2 h 30 m
€112-124
CGN · 15 km
HurghadaHRG
5 h 5 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
CGN · 15 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 2026-09 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

MeasureBiarritzCologne
Official languageFrenchGerman
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m59 m
Main airportBiarritz Pays Basque airport (BIQ)3 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBiarritzCologne
City population26,2061,024,621
People per km²2,2402,530
Museums within 10 km840
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km23
Distinct cuisines in the centre2484
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months

Where else could you go?

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