VacationSelector

Cardiff or Cologne?

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

Your match

Cardiff
48
match

Wins on beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Cologne
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on good for families and museums & heritage 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.

CardiffCologne
Beaches & swimming. Cardiff leads by 46 points.46
CardiffCologne
Score460
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km840
Coast distance2 km256 km
Water distance2 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 12 points.12
CardiffCologne
Score6072
Restaurants within 2 km of centre5411,142
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3235
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 21 points.21
CardiffCologne
Score3960
Museums within 10 km6147
Museums within 2 km of centre627
Share of museums within 2 km %1057
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 16 points.16
CardiffCologne
Score4864
Drinking venues within 4 km5361,107
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre395727
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7466
Nightclubs within 4 km3590
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 21 points.21
CardiffCologne
Score5071
Protected land share 50 km %1853
Landscape blanket share 50 km %1552
Land share of disc %68100
Park area within 2 km88 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 40 points.40
CardiffCologne
Score3272
Tourist attractions within 2 km443
Park area within 2 km88 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km26
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 8 points.8
CardiffCologne
Score4553
Notable places within 2 km5181
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cologne leads by 6 points.6
CardiffCologne
Score5460
Price level global84.975.9
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Cologne leads by 6 points.6
CardiffCologne
Score5460
Monthly daytime high7.7 °C to 20.2 °C6.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 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
Cardiff
8
8
10
13
16
18
20
20
18
14
11
9
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Daylight, hours per day
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Cardiff
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
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. Cardiff: 1991-2020 normals, Cardiff-Wales Airport (14.9 km from centre). Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCardiffCologne
AntalyaAYT
4 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 45 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
MunichMUC
1 h 55 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
Las PalmasLPA
4 h 0 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
4 h 25 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
Puerto del RosarioFUE
3 h 50 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 55 m
€85-113
1 stop
BRS · 34 km
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
HurghadaHRG
5 h 25 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
BridgetownBGI
8 h 25 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 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 2026-09, 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

MeasureCardiffCologne
Official languageEnglishGerman
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation41 m59 m
Main airportCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinationsCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureCardiffCologne
City population383,5361,024,621
People per km²2,7342,530
Museums within 10 km940
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre5584
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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