VacationSelector

Cologne or Glasgow?

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 nature & day trips and good for families with your weighting.

Glasgow
48
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.

CologneGlasgow
Beaches & swimming. Glasgow leads by 36 points.36
CologneGlasgow
Score036
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km403
Coast distance256 km3 km
Water distance3 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 9 points.9
CologneGlasgow
Score7263
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142740
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3529
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 15 points.15
CologneGlasgow
Score6045
Museums within 10 km4732
Museums within 2 km of centre2713
Share of museums within 2 km %5741
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 1 points.1
CologneGlasgow
Score6463
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1071,078
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727654
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6661
Nightclubs within 4 km9073
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 33 points.33
CologneGlasgow
Score7138
Protected land share 50 km %5316
Landscape blanket share 50 km %5212
Land share of disc %10091
Park area within 2 km118 hectares56 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 31 points.31
CologneGlasgow
Score7241
Tourist attractions within 2 km4313
Park area within 2 km118 hectares56 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km61
Sights concentration. Cologne and Glasgow are level on 53.
CologneGlasgow
Score5353
Notable places within 2 km8180
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cologne leads by 6 points.6
CologneGlasgow
Score6054
Price level global75.984.9
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Cologne leads by 17 points.17
CologneGlasgow
Score6043
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C6.6 °C to 18.9 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm102 mm to 207 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
Glasgow
7
7
9
12
15
18
19
19
16
13
9
7
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Glasgow
8
7
7
8
10
13
15
15
14
12
11
9
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Glasgow
207
170
147
102
103
111
129
145
132
185
190
205
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Glasgow
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Glasgow
1
2
3
4
5
4
4
4
3
2
2
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). Glasgow: 1991-2020 normals, Glasgow Airport (11.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneGlasgow
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
4 h 40 m
€171-239
1 stop
GLA · 11 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 20 m
€38-45
GLA · 11 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
4 h 0 m
€201-242
1 stop
EDI · 56 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 30 m
€112-124
CGN · 15 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
EDI · 56 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
Las PalmasLPA
4 h 25 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
4 h 30 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
HurghadaHRG
4 h 45 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
5 h 50 m
no fares
GLA · 11 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

MeasureCologneGlasgow
Official languageGermanEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation59 m21 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsGlasgow Airport (GLA)11 km from centre95 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneGlasgow
City population1,024,621626,410
People per km²2,530190
Museums within 10 km4029
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre8454
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 Glasgow 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. 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.