VacationSelector

Cologne or Krakow?

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 nature & day trips and nightlife with your weighting.

Krakow
58
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage 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.

CologneKrakow
Beaches & swimming. Cologne and Krakow are level on 0.
CologneKrakow
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km409
Coast distance256 km456 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 4 points.4
CologneKrakow
Score7268
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1421,032
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3530
Museums & heritage. Krakow leads by 15 points.15
CologneKrakow
Score6075
Museums within 10 km4784
Museums within 2 km of centre2769
Share of museums within 2 km %5782
Unesco sites within 50 km34
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 7 points.7
CologneKrakow
Score6457
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107836
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727697
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6683
Nightclubs within 4 km9054
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 25 points.25
CologneKrakow
Score7146
Protected land share 50 km %5314
Landscape blanket share 50 km %521
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares79 hectares
Good for families. Krakow leads by 2 points.2
CologneKrakow
Score7274
Tourist attractions within 2 km4377
Park area within 2 km118 hectares79 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km64
Sights concentration. Krakow leads by 15 points.15
CologneKrakow
Score5368
Notable places within 2 km81198
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Krakow leads by 19 points.19
CologneKrakow
Score6079
Price level global75.949
Daily budget€163€133
Year-round weather. Cologne leads by 2 points.2
CologneKrakow
Score6058
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C1.5 °C to 25.3 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm31 mm to 100 mm
Dry months04
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
Krakow
2
4
8
15
20
23
25
25
19
14
8
3
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Krakow
38
31
38
47
79
77
100
75
67
51
41
35
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Krakow
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Krakow
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). Krakow: 1991-2020 normals, Krakow (10.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneKrakow
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
KTW · 76 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
OsloOSL, TRF
1 h 50 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
HurghadaHRG
4 h 45 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
KTW · 76 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

MeasureCologneKrakow
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 m219 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsKraków John Paul II International Airport (KRK)11 km from centre133 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneKrakow
City population1,024,621804,237
People per km²2,5302,459
Museums within 10 km40114
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km34
Distinct cuisines in the centre8468

Where else could you go?

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