VacationSelector

Budapest or Geneva?

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 nightlife with your weighting.

Geneva
50
match

Wins on 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.

BudapestGeneva
Beaches & swimming. Budapest and Geneva are level on 0.
BudapestGeneva
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km643
Coast distance10,000 km279 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Budapest leads by 7 points.7
BudapestGeneva
Score7770
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,6991,028
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3535
Museums & heritage. Budapest leads by 12 points.12
BudapestGeneva
Score6452
Museums within 10 km14435
Museums within 2 km of centre6420
Share of museums within 2 km %4457
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Budapest leads by 22 points.22
BudapestGeneva
Score7250
Drinking venues within 4 km1,765549
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,168427
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6678
Nightclubs within 4 km9760
Nature & day trips. Geneva leads by 19 points.19
BudapestGeneva
Score4059
Protected land share 50 km %827
Landscape blanket share 50 km %021
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km111 hectares182 hectares
Good for families. Budapest leads by 6 points.6
BudapestGeneva
Score7165
Tourist attractions within 2 km7528
Park area within 2 km111 hectares182 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Budapest leads by 13 points.13
BudapestGeneva
Score6956
Notable places within 2 km20699
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Budapest leads by 45 points.45
BudapestGeneva
Score8035
Price level global48110.5
Daily budget€104€248
Year-round weather. Budapest leads by 5 points.5
BudapestGeneva
Score6459
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 27.9 °C5.1 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 75 mm55 mm to 94 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
Geneva
5
7
12
16
20
24
27
26
21
16
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Budapest
29
27
30
37
67
67
75
60
48
41
48
39
Geneva
71
55
61
66
77
81
77
80
87
94
87
88
Daylight, hours per day
Budapest
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Geneva
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Budapest
2
4
5
7
9
9
10
9
7
5
3
2
Geneva
2
3
6
6
7
8
9
8
6
4
2
2

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). Geneva: 1991-2020 normals, Geneve-Cointrin (5.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBudapestGeneva
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€63-91
BUD · 18 km
1 h 35 m
€91-200
GVA · 5 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 10 m
€97-114
BUD · 18 km
1 h 10 m
€104-203
GVA · 5 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 50 m
€87-214
BUD · 18 km
2 h 55 m
€147-338
GVA · 5 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 5 m
€175-230
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
1 h 30 m
€160-186
GVA · 5 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 0 m
€58-94
BUD · 18 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 25 m
€93-118
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
1 h 25 m
€65-78
GVA · 5 km
MadridMAD
3 h 0 m
€84-154
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
LisbonLIS
3 h 35 m
€159-167
BUD · 18 km
2 h 25 m
€156-181
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 25 m
€276-394
2 stops
BUD · 18 km
6 h 25 m
€318-351
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 15 m
no fares
BUD · 18 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 5 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

MeasureBudapestGeneva
Official languageHungarianFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyForint (HUF)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
Elevation117 m403 m
Main airportBudapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport (BUD)18 km from centre155 non-stop destinationsGeneva International Airport (GVA)5 km from centre140 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days9 days

By the numbers

MeasureBudapestGeneva
City population1,685,209209,061
People per km²3,20913,148
Museums within 10 km8135
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre8680

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Budapest or Geneva 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.