VacationSelector

Cologne or New York?

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 value for money with your weighting.

New York
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife 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.

CologneNew York
Beaches & swimming. New York leads by 64 points.64
CologneNew York
Score064
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km4017
Coast distance256 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. New York leads by 23 points.23
CologneNew York
Score7295
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1426,032
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3538
Museums & heritage. Cologne and New York are level on 60.
CologneNew York
Score6060
Museums within 10 km47119
Museums within 2 km of centre2731
Share of museums within 2 km %5726
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. New York leads by 25 points.25
CologneNew York
Score6489
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1074,159
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre7272,015
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6648
Nightclubs within 4 km90192
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 32 points.32
CologneNew York
Score7139
Protected land share 50 km %534
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10069
Park area within 2 km118 hectares134 hectares
Good for families. Cologne and New York are level on 72.
CologneNew York
Score7272
Tourist attractions within 2 km4337
Park area within 2 km118 hectares134 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km67
Sights concentration. New York leads by 21 points.21
CologneNew York
Score5374
Notable places within 2 km81268
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cologne leads by 17 points.17
CologneNew York
Score6043
Price level global75.9100
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Cologne leads by 2 points.2
CologneNew York
Score6058
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C4.5 °C to 30.1 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm74 mm to 112 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
New York
5
6
10
16
22
27
30
29
25
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
New York
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
New York
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). New York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneNew York
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
8 h 5 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
7 h 10 m
€459-498
JFK · 21 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
8 h 15 m
€430-458
JFK · 21 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
8 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
8 h 45 m
€362-464
JFK · 21 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
7 h 55 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
BerlinBER
1 h 15 m
€136-255
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
8 h 15 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 20 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
11 h 25 m
€622-836
1 stop
JFK · 21 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

MeasureCologneNew York
Official languageGerman
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation59 m25 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneNew York
City population1,024,6218,804,190
People per km²2,5307,256
Museums within 10 km40157
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre84132
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

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