VacationSelector
The Esplanade boardwalk and its palms, Cairns
CairnsThe Esplanade boardwalk and its palms
Colourful houses along the Inn, Innsbruck
InnsbruckColourful houses along the Inn

Photos: Cairns by Donaldytong, Public domain; Innsbruck by Wolfgang Weiser, Pexels License.

Cairns or Innsbruck?

Our verdict in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities, and the climate month by month, so you can choose for your trip.

Choose Cairns for

  • beaches
  • nightlife
  • families

What lies behind each score is written up on Cairns’s own page.

Choose Innsbruck for

  • culture and sights
  • getting around
  • day trips

What lies behind each score is written up on Innsbruck’s own page.

Scoreboard

Twelve categories on one fixed scale from 0 to 100. The shaded stretch is the gap between the two.

Beaches & swimming. Cairns 62, Innsbruck 20: Cairns leads by 42 points.
Food & drink. Cairns and Innsbruck are level on 40.
Culture & sights. Cairns 22, Innsbruck 58: Innsbruck leads by 36 points.
Nightlife. Cairns 42, Innsbruck 38: Cairns leads by 4 points.
Nature & outdoors. Cairns 95, Innsbruck 96: Innsbruck leads by 1 points.
Day trips. Cairns 45, Innsbruck 72: Innsbruck leads by 27 points.
Good for families. Cairns 66, Innsbruck 62: Cairns leads by 4 points.
Getting around. Cairns 45, Innsbruck 78: Innsbruck leads by 33 points.
Shopping & style. Cairns 28, Innsbruck 38: Innsbruck leads by 10 points.
Affordability. Cairns 35, Innsbruck 38: Innsbruck leads by 3 points.
Live music & performing arts. Cairns 22, Innsbruck 45: Innsbruck leads by 23 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Cairns and Innsbruck are level on 45.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Cairns and Innsbruck.

Your match

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders, and both match scores follow your weighting.

Cairns
46match

Wins on beaches and nightlife with your weighting.

Innsbruck
Best match
53match

Wins on culture and sights and getting around with your weighting.

What matters to you?

When should you go?

Pick your month. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Cairns in July

24 °Cdaytime high
20 °Cnight-time low
30 mmrain in the month
No recordsunshine a day
24 °Csea
11 hdaylight a day

Innsbruck in July

26 °Cdaytime high
14 °Cnight-time low
129 mmrain in the month
8 hsunshine a day
No seasea
16 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

0200400600JFMAMJJASOND
CairnsInnsbruck

Where the figures come from

Cairns's temperatures are measured 27 km from the centre, at Green Island Aws.

Cairns has no rain gauge within 25 km of the centre, so its rainfall comes from a gridded climate dataset read at the city rather than from a gauge further away.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cairns: 1993-2010 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Green Island Aws (27 km from centre). Innsbruck: 1991-2020 normals, Innsbruck-Flughafen (3.3 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureCairnsInnsbruck
Official languageEnglishGerman, Austrian Sign Language
CurrencyAustralian Dollar (AUD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsI230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+10UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number000112
Elevation7 m574 m
Main airportCairns International Airport (CNS)6 km from centre32 non-stop destinationsInnsbruck Airport (INN)4 km from centre40 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureCairnsInnsbruck
City population146,778132,499
People per km²3011,263
Museums within 10 km128
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months-

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cairns or Innsbruck somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Rainfall where no rain gauge is within 25 km is from the TerraClimate 1991-2020 climatology (Abatzoglou et al. 2018, Scientific Data), read at the city. 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.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-11-01. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.