VacationSelector

Cologne or Montpellier?

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 museums & heritage and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Montpellier
47
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.

CologneMontpellier
Beaches & swimming. Montpellier leads by 32 points.32
CologneMontpellier
Score032
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km408
Coast distance256 km9 km
Water distance9 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 7 points.7
CologneMontpellier
Score7265
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142737
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3534
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 34 points.34
CologneMontpellier
Score6026
Museums within 10 km4714
Museums within 2 km of centre273
Share of museums within 2 km %5721
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 26 points.26
CologneMontpellier
Score6438
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107318
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727265
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6683
Nightclubs within 4 km9025
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 28 points.28
CologneMontpellier
Score7143
Protected land share 50 km %5315
Landscape blanket share 50 km %5210
Land share of disc %10070
Park area within 2 km118 hectares55 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 28 points.28
CologneMontpellier
Score7244
Tourist attractions within 2 km438
Park area within 2 km118 hectares55 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km67
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 15 points.15
CologneMontpellier
Score5338
Notable places within 2 km8135
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Montpellier leads by 2 points.2
CologneMontpellier
Score6062
Price level global75.973.7
Daily budget€163€160
Year-round weather. Montpellier leads by 14 points.14
CologneMontpellier
Score6074
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C12 °C to 29.6 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm17 mm to 93 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
Montpellier
12
13
16
19
23
27
30
29
25
21
16
13
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Montpellier
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Montpellier
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
10
8
6
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneMontpellier
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 40 m
no fares
EIN · 124 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
BastiaBIA
1 h 45 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 50 m
€203-369
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 109 km
TunisTUN
2 h 35 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
MRS · 109 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

MeasureCologneMontpellier
Official languageGermanFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation59 m7 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneMontpellier
City population1,024,621310,240
People per km²2,5305,452
Museums within 10 km4014
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre8465
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cologne or Montpellier 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. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.