VacationSelector

Cologne or Izmir?

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.

Izmir
53
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.

CologneIzmir
Beaches & swimming. Izmir leads by 55 points.55
CologneIzmir
Score055
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km404
Coast distance256 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 23 points.23
CologneIzmir
Score7249
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142770
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3512
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 17 points.17
CologneIzmir
Score6043
Museums within 10 km4747
Museums within 2 km of centre2727
Share of museums within 2 km %5757
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 2 points.2
CologneIzmir
Score6462
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1071,028
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727695
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6668
Nightclubs within 4 km9070
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 42 points.42
CologneIzmir
Score7129
Protected land share 50 km %534
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10084
Park area within 2 km118 hectares62 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 37 points.37
CologneIzmir
Score7235
Tourist attractions within 2 km436
Park area within 2 km118 hectares62 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km62
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 13 points.13
CologneIzmir
Score5340
Notable places within 2 km8139
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Izmir leads by 29 points.29
CologneIzmir
Score6089
Price level global75.935.2
Daily budget€163€100
Year-round weather. Izmir leads by 12 points.12
CologneIzmir
Score6072
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C13 °C to 33.9 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm1 mm to 127 mm
Dry months05
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
Izmir
13
14
17
21
27
31
34
34
29
24
19
14
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Izmir
16
16
16
17
19
22
23
24
23
21
19
17
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Izmir
119
107
77
51
33
13
1
4
22
55
96
127
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Izmir
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Izmir
5
5
7
8
10
11
13
12
10
8
6
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Izmir: 1991-2020 normals, Izmir (3.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneIzmir
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
1 h 5 m
€46-55
ADB · 13 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
1 h 5 m
€75-89
ADB · 13 km
AnkaraESB
3 h 25 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 20 m
€54-66
ADB · 13 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
3 h 45 m
€119-184
ADB · 13 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 40 m
€185-288
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
BerlinBER
1 h 15 m
€136-255
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
2 h 55 m
€177-214
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
55 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
3 h 0 m
€204-238
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
ADB · 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 2026-09 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

MeasureCologneIzmir
Official languageGermanTurkish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+3
Emergency number112112
Elevation59 m2 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsAdnan Menderes International Airport (ADB)13 km from centre120 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneIzmir
City population1,024,6214,493,242
People per km²2,5304,760
Museums within 10 km4029
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre8420
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

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