VacationSelector

Cologne or Manchester?

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

Manchester
47
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.

CologneManchester
Beaches & swimming. Manchester leads by 28 points.28
CologneManchester
Score028
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km4010
Coast distance256 km27 km
Water distance27 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 4 points.4
CologneManchester
Score7268
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142853
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3535
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 18 points.18
CologneManchester
Score6042
Museums within 10 km4723
Museums within 2 km of centre2711
Share of museums within 2 km %5748
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 2 points.2
CologneManchester
Score6462
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1071,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727792
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6677
Nightclubs within 4 km9082
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 35 points.35
CologneManchester
Score7136
Protected land share 50 km %5317
Landscape blanket share 50 km %5217
Land share of disc %10099
Park area within 2 km118 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 40 points.40
CologneManchester
Score7232
Tourist attractions within 2 km435
Park area within 2 km118 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km62
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 5 points.5
CologneManchester
Score5348
Notable places within 2 km8161
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cologne leads by 6 points.6
CologneManchester
Score6054
Price level global75.984.9
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Cologne leads by 6 points.6
CologneManchester
Score6054
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C7.2 °C to 20.8 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm51 mm to 95 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
Manchester
7
8
10
13
17
19
21
20
18
14
10
8
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Manchester
7
6
7
9
11
14
16
17
16
14
11
9
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Manchester
67
62
51
61
59
63
60
73
71
95
86
84
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Manchester
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Manchester
2
2
3
5
6
6
6
6
4
3
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). Manchester: 1991-2020 normals, Manchester Airport (14.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneManchester
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
4 h 20 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
55 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 35 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
BridgetownBGI
9 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
MAN · 15 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

MeasureCologneManchester
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 m38 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsManchester Airport (MAN)15 km from centre210 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneManchester
City population1,024,621547,627
People per km²2,5304,737
Museums within 10 km4028
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre8463
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 Manchester 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.