VacationSelector

Cologne or Melbourne?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Cologne
57
match

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

Melbourne
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

CologneMelbourne
Beaches & swimming. Melbourne leads by 55 points.55
CologneMelbourne
Score055
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km4019
Coast distance256 km4 km
Water distance—4 km
Places to eat. Melbourne leads by 3 points.3
CologneMelbourne
Score7275
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1421,888
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3529
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 11 points.11
CologneMelbourne
Score6049
Museums within 10 km4742
Museums within 2 km of centre2724
Share of museums within 2 km %5757
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Melbourne leads by 10 points.10
CologneMelbourne
Score6474
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1071,921
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre7271,200
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6662
Nightclubs within 4 km90124
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 28 points.28
CologneMelbourne
Score7143
Protected land share 50 km %536
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10081
Park area within 2 km118 hectares166 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 12 points.12
CologneMelbourne
Score7260
Tourist attractions within 2 km4326
Park area within 2 km118 hectares166 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km61
Sights concentration. Melbourne leads by 4 points.4
CologneMelbourne
Score5357
Notable places within 2 km81103
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cologne leads by 10 points.10
CologneMelbourne
Score6050
Price level global75.990.2
Daily budget€163—
Year-round weather. Melbourne leads by 16 points.16
CologneMelbourne
Score6076
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C13.6 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm45 mm to 69 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
Melbourne
27
27
24
20
17
14
14
15
17
20
22
25
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Melbourne
20
21
20
18
15
13
12
11
12
14
17
19
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Melbourne
46
48
45
58
50
58
46
52
60
56
69
65
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Melbourne
15
14
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
15
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Melbourne
9
7
7
6
5
4
4
6
6
7
7
9

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Melbourne: 1991-2020 normals, Latrobe University / Kingsbury (13.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneMelbourne
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
17 h 55 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
DohaDOH
6 h 15 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
14 h 45 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
Abu DhabiAUH
6 h 30 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
14 h 20 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 35 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
14 h 20 m
€856-961
2 stops
MEL · 19 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

MeasureCologneMelbourne
Official languageGermanEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Australian Dollar (AUD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzI230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+10, UTC+11 in summer
Emergency number112000
Elevation59 m31 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsMelbourne Airport (MEL)19 km from centre66 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneMelbourne
City population1,024,6215,350,705
People per km²2,530535
Museums within 10 km4042
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre8486
Swim season, months above 21 °C–None

Where else could you go?

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