VacationSelector

Cologne or Geneva?

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 value for money and nightlife with your weighting.

Geneva
50
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

CologneGeneva
Beaches & swimming. Cologne and Geneva are level on 0.
CologneGeneva
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km4043
Coast distance256 km279 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 2 points.2
CologneGeneva
Score7270
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1421,028
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3535
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 8 points.8
CologneGeneva
Score6052
Museums within 10 km4735
Museums within 2 km of centre2720
Share of museums within 2 km %5757
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 14 points.14
CologneGeneva
Score6450
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107549
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727427
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6678
Nightclubs within 4 km9060
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 12 points.12
CologneGeneva
Score7159
Protected land share 50 km %5327
Landscape blanket share 50 km %5221
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares182 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 7 points.7
CologneGeneva
Score7265
Tourist attractions within 2 km4328
Park area within 2 km118 hectares182 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km62
Sights concentration. Geneva leads by 3 points.3
CologneGeneva
Score5356
Notable places within 2 km8199
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cologne leads by 25 points.25
CologneGeneva
Score6035
Price level global75.9110.5
Daily budget€163€248
Year-round weather. Cologne leads by 1 points.1
CologneGeneva
Score6059
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C5.1 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm55 mm to 94 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
Geneva
5
7
12
16
20
24
27
26
21
16
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Geneva
71
55
61
66
77
81
77
80
87
94
87
88
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Geneva
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Geneva
2
3
6
6
7
8
9
8
6
4
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). Geneva: 1991-2020 normals, Geneve-Cointrin (5.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneGeneva
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 35 m
€91-200
GVA · 5 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
2 h 55 m
€147-338
GVA · 5 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
1 h 25 m
€65-78
GVA · 5 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 50 m
€203-369
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
2 h 25 m
€156-181
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
PortoOPO
2 h 35 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 10 m
€127-171
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
1 h 40 m
€235-253
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
HurghadaHRG
4 h 45 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
4 h 30 m
no fares
GVA · 5 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

MeasureCologneGeneva
Official languageGermanFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation59 m403 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsGeneva International Airport (GVA)5 km from centre140 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days9 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneGeneva
City population1,024,621209,061
People per km²2,53013,148
Museums within 10 km4035
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre8480

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cologne or Geneva 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.