VacationSelector

Budapest or Cologne?

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

Your match

Budapest
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on value for money and sights concentration with your weighting.

Cologne
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families 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.

BudapestCologne
Beaches & swimming. Budapest and Cologne are level on 0.
BudapestCologne
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km640
Coast distance10,000 km256 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Budapest leads by 5 points.5
BudapestCologne
Score7772
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,6991,142
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3535
Museums & heritage. Budapest leads by 4 points.4
BudapestCologne
Score6460
Museums within 10 km14447
Museums within 2 km of centre6427
Share of museums within 2 km %4457
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Budapest leads by 8 points.8
BudapestCologne
Score7264
Drinking venues within 4 km1,7651,107
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,168727
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6666
Nightclubs within 4 km9790
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 31 points.31
BudapestCologne
Score4071
Protected land share 50 km %853
Landscape blanket share 50 km %052
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km111 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 1 points.1
BudapestCologne
Score7172
Tourist attractions within 2 km7543
Park area within 2 km111 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km16
Sights concentration. Budapest leads by 16 points.16
BudapestCologne
Score6953
Notable places within 2 km20681
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Budapest leads by 20 points.20
BudapestCologne
Score8060
Price level global4875.9
Daily budget€104€163
Year-round weather. Budapest leads by 4 points.4
BudapestCologne
Score6460
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 27.9 °C6.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 75 mm48 mm to 81 mm
Dry months50
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
Budapest
4
7
11
17
22
26
27
28
22
16
9
4
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Rainfall, mm
Budapest
29
27
30
37
67
67
75
60
48
41
48
39
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Daylight, hours per day
Budapest
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Budapest
2
4
5
7
9
9
10
9
7
5
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. Budapest: 1991-2020 normals, Budapest Met Center (2.1 km from centre). Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBudapestCologne
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€63-91
BUD · 18 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 50 m
€87-214
BUD · 18 km
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
AntalyaAYT
2 h 25 m
€151-177
BUD · 18 km
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 30 m
no fares
BUD · 18 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
MunichMUC
1 h 20 m
€166-184
BUD · 18 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 40 m
€42-56
BUD · 18 km
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 25 m
€93-118
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
ViennaVIE
55 m
no fares
BUD · 18 km
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
BerlinBER
1 h 30 m
€53-90
BUD · 18 km
1 h 15 m
€136-255
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
HurghadaHRG
3 h 40 m
no fares
BUD · 18 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

MeasureBudapestCologne
Official languageHungarianGerman
CurrencyForint (HUF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation117 m59 m
Main airportBudapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport (BUD)18 km from centre155 non-stop destinationsCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBudapestCologne
City population1,685,2091,024,621
People per km²3,2092,530
Museums within 10 km8140
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre8684

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Budapest 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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. 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.