VacationSelector

Cologne or Gdansk?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Cologne
57
match

Wins on nightlife and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Gdansk
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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.

CologneGdansk
Beaches & swimming. Gdansk leads by 55 points.55
CologneGdansk
Score055
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km4020
Coast distance256 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 20 points.20
CologneGdansk
Score7252
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142348
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3528
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 3 points.3
CologneGdansk
Score6057
Museums within 10 km4743
Museums within 2 km of centre2728
Share of museums within 2 km %5765
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 28 points.28
CologneGdansk
Score6436
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107269
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727203
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6675
Nightclubs within 4 km9030
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 26 points.26
CologneGdansk
Score7145
Protected land share 50 km %5312
Landscape blanket share 50 km %523
Land share of disc %10070
Park area within 2 km118 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Gdansk leads by 3 points.3
CologneGdansk
Score7275
Tourist attractions within 2 km43108
Park area within 2 km118 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km63
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 1 points.1
CologneGdansk
Score5352
Notable places within 2 km8176
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Gdansk leads by 19 points.19
CologneGdansk
Score6079
Price level global75.949
Daily budget€163€133
Year-round weather. Cologne leads by 8 points.8
CologneGdansk
Score6052
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C0.7 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm37 mm to 87 mm
Dry months03
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
Gdansk
1
2
6
12
17
20
22
22
18
12
7
3
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Gdansk
4
3
3
5
10
14
18
19
17
13
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Gdansk
47
37
40
37
59
68
87
78
74
71
54
55
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Gdansk
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Gdansk
1
2
5
7
8
8
8
8
6
4
1
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Gdansk: 1991-2020 normals, Gdansk-Rebiechowo (12.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneGdansk
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
OsloOSL, TRF
1 h 50 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 25 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 5 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
1 h 50 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
HurghadaHRG
4 h 45 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
4 h 30 m
no fares
GDN · 13 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

MeasureCologneGdansk
Official languageGermanPolish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Zloty (PLN)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation59 m11 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsGdańsk Lech Wałęsa Airport (GDN)13 km from centre65 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneGdansk
City population1,024,621487,834
People per km²2,530714
Museums within 10 km4037
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre8448
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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