VacationSelector

Cologne or Faro?

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 nightlife and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Faro
47
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

CologneFaro
Beaches & swimming. Faro leads by 61 points.61
CologneFaro
Score061
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km4013
Coast distance256 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 28 points.28
CologneFaro
Score7244
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142255
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3522
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 38 points.38
CologneFaro
Score6022
Museums within 10 km479
Museums within 2 km of centre278
Share of museums within 2 km %5789
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 43 points.43
CologneFaro
Score6421
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107143
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727123
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6686
Nightclubs within 4 km908
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 14 points.14
CologneFaro
Score7157
Protected land share 50 km %5311
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10042
Park area within 2 km118 hectares34 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 36 points.36
CologneFaro
Score7236
Tourist attractions within 2 km4310
Park area within 2 km118 hectares34 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km62
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 31 points.31
CologneFaro
Score5322
Notable places within 2 km8114
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Faro leads by 14 points.14
CologneFaro
Score6074
Price level global75.955.9
Daily budget€163€109
Year-round weather. Faro leads by 23 points.23
CologneFaro
Score6083
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C16.3 °C to 29 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm1 mm to 102 mm
Dry months06
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
Faro
16
17
19
21
24
27
29
29
26
23
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Faro
17
16
16
17
18
20
21
22
21
21
19
17
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Faro
55
39
44
40
23
6
1
5
28
57
75
102
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Faro
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Faro
6
6
8
9
10
12
12
11
9
8
6
6

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Faro: 1991-2020 normals, Faro / Aeroporto (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneFaro
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
DublinDUB
1 h 50 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 50 m
€75-114
FAO · 3 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 30 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
3 h 25 m
€156-284
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 50 m
€203-369
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
55 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
2 h 30 m
€126-204
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
BerlinBER
1 h 15 m
€136-255
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
3 h 30 m
€169-237
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
PortoOPO
2 h 35 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 15 m
€37-132
FAO · 3 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 35 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
FAO · 3 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

MeasureCologneFaro
Official languageGermanPortuguese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation59 m10 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsFaro - Gago Coutinho International Airport (FAO)3 km from centre91 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneFaro
City population1,024,62164,560
People per km²2,530319
Museums within 10 km402
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre8434
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cologne or Faro 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.