VacationSelector

Cologne or Fort Lauderdale?

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 sights concentration with your weighting.

Fort Lauderdale
45
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.

CologneFort Lauderdale
Beaches & swimming. Fort Lauderdale leads by 84 points.84
CologneFort Lauderdale
Score084
Swim season months012
Beaches 10 km407
Coast distance256 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 27 points.27
CologneFort Lauderdale
Score7245
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142371
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3518
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 40 points.40
CologneFort Lauderdale
Score6020
Museums within 10 km4714
Museums within 2 km of centre276
Share of museums within 2 km %5743
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 30 points.30
CologneFort Lauderdale
Score6434
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107259
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727144
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6656
Nightclubs within 4 km9018
Nature & day trips. Fort Lauderdale leads by 10 points.10
CologneFort Lauderdale
Score7181
Protected land share 50 km %5320
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10051
Park area within 2 km118 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 53 points.53
CologneFort Lauderdale
Score7219
Tourist attractions within 2 km432
Park area within 2 km118 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km60
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 53 points.53
CologneFort Lauderdale
Score530
Notable places within 2 km812
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cologne leads by 17 points.17
CologneFort Lauderdale
Score6043
Price level global75.9100
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Fort Lauderdale leads by 16 points.16
CologneFort Lauderdale
Score6076
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C24.2 °C to 32.3 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm55 mm to 219 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
Fort Lauderdale
24
26
27
29
30
31
32
32
31
30
27
26
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Fort Lauderdale
25
25
25
26
27
28
29
30
29
28
27
26
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Fort Lauderdale
55
59
57
72
159
219
166
198
202
144
91
73
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Fort Lauderdale
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Fort Lauderdale
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Fort Lauderdale: 1991-2020 normals, Fort Lauderdale (7.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneFort Lauderdale
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
11 h 55 m
no fares
MIA · 41 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
9 h 0 m
€550-628
1 stop
MIA · 41 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
MIA · 41 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
MIA · 41 km
MadridMAD
2 h 20 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
9 h 0 m
€522-631
1 stop
MIA · 41 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
MIA · 41 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 50 m
€203-369
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
MIA · 41 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
MIA · 41 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 35 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
15 h 30 m
€891-1074
2 stops
MIA · 41 km
Fort-de-FranceFDF
9 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
MIA · 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 2026-10, 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

MeasureCologneFort Lauderdale
Official languageGerman
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation59 m11 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsFort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL)7 km from centre125 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneFort Lauderdale
City population1,024,621182,760
People per km²2,5301,829
Museums within 10 km406
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre8425
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 Cologne or Fort Lauderdale 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.