VacationSelector

Boston or Cologne?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Boston
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

Cologne
57
match

Wins on good for families and nature & day trips 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.

BostonCologne
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 60 points.60
BostonCologne
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km6840
Coast distance1 km256 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Boston leads by 1 points.1
BostonCologne
Score7372
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4521,142
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3235
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 17 points.17
BostonCologne
Score4360
Museums within 10 km7947
Museums within 2 km of centre2727
Share of museums within 2 km %3457
Unesco sites within 50 km03
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 6 points.6
BostonCologne
Score5864
Drinking venues within 4 km8861,107
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre513727
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5866
Nightclubs within 4 km4390
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 18 points.18
BostonCologne
Score5371
Protected land share 50 km %1253
Landscape blanket share 50 km %052
Land share of disc %77100
Park area within 2 km116 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 19 points.19
BostonCologne
Score5372
Tourist attractions within 2 km2843
Park area within 2 km116 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km06
Sights concentration. Boston leads by 5 points.5
BostonCologne
Score5853
Notable places within 2 km11181
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cologne leads by 17 points.17
BostonCologne
Score4360
Price level global10075.9
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Cologne leads by 4 points.4
BostonCologne
Score5660
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C6.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 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
Boston
3
4
8
14
19
25
28
27
23
17
11
6
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
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
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
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. Boston: 1991-2020 normals, Boston Logan International (3.5 km from centre). Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonCologne
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
9 h 45 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
MunichMUC
7 h 55 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
BarcelonaBCN
7 h 35 m
€481-586
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
ViennaVIE
8 h 20 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
7 h 50 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
MadridMAD
7 h 5 m
€570
BOS · 4 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
DublinDUB
6 h 20 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
Abu DhabiAUH
13 h 15 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
6 h 30 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

MeasureBostonCologne
Official languageGerman
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation43 m59 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonCologne
City population675,6471,024,621
People per km²2,9102,530
Museums within 10 km5140
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km03
Distinct cuisines in the centre7484
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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