VacationSelector

Cologne or Cork?

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

Your match

Cologne
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on good for families and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Cork
38
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

CologneCork
Beaches & swimming. Cork leads by 28 points.28
CologneCork
Score028
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km401
Coast distance256 km3 km
Water distance—3 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 22 points.22
CologneCork
Score7250
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142224
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3535
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 37 points.37
CologneCork
Score6023
Museums within 10 km4710
Museums within 2 km of centre278
Share of museums within 2 km %5780
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 26 points.26
CologneCork
Score6438
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107361
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727292
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6681
Nightclubs within 4 km909
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 19 points.19
CologneCork
Score7152
Protected land share 50 km %53—
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10074
Park area within 2 km118 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 45 points.45
CologneCork
Score7227
Tourist attractions within 2 km437
Park area within 2 km118 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km60
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 31 points.31
CologneCork
Score5322
Notable places within 2 km8114
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cologne leads by 3 points.3
CologneCork
Score6057
Price level global75.980.2
Daily budget€163€187
Year-round weather. Cologne leads by 11 points.11
CologneCork
Score6049
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C8.3 °C to 18.6 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm78 mm to 140 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
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Cork
8
9
10
12
15
17
19
19
17
13
10
9
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Cork
10
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
14
12
11
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Cork
132
100
92
85
78
88
86
98
91
140
125
134
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Cork
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Cork
2
2
4
5
6
6
5
5
4
3
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Cork: 1991-2020 normals, Cork Airport (5.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneCork
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
AmsterdamAMS
55 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 30 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
FaroFAO
3 h 0 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
EdinburghEDI
1 h 45 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORK · 7 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 30 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
ORK · 7 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 2026-08 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

MeasureCologneCork
Official languageGermanEnglish, Irish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation59 m0 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsCork International Airport (ORK)7 km from centre46 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneCork
City population1,024,621222,333
People per km²2,5305,961
Museums within 10 km405
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre8449
Swim season, months above 21 °C–None

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cologne or Cork 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). 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.