VacationSelector

Cologne or Nice?

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 good for families and nightlife with your weighting.

Nice
56
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.

CologneNice
Beaches & swimming. Nice leads by 73 points.73
CologneNice
Score073
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km4070
Coast distance256 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 3 points.3
CologneNice
Score7269
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1421,231
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3528
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 14 points.14
CologneNice
Score6046
Museums within 10 km4727
Museums within 2 km of centre2714
Share of museums within 2 km %5752
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 20 points.20
CologneNice
Score6444
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107428
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727388
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6691
Nightclubs within 4 km9026
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 14 points.14
CologneNice
Score7157
Protected land share 50 km %5324
Landscape blanket share 50 km %5220
Land share of disc %10062
Park area within 2 km118 hectares56 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 42 points.42
CologneNice
Score7230
Tourist attractions within 2 km434
Park area within 2 km118 hectares56 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km63
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 6 points.6
CologneNice
Score5347
Notable places within 2 km8160
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Nice leads by 2 points.2
CologneNice
Score6062
Price level global75.973.7
Daily budget€163€160
Year-round weather. Nice leads by 14 points.14
CologneNice
Score6074
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C13.3 °C to 27.9 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm13 mm to 138 mm
Dry months03
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
Nice
13
14
15
17
21
25
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Nice
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
22
20
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Nice
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Nice
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
Nice
5
6
7
7
9
10
11
11
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). Nice: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneNice
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 6 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 6 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
2 h 45 m
€202-329
NCE · 6 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
NCE · 6 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 25 m
€198-243
1 stop
NCE · 6 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
1 h 40 m
€175-231
NCE · 6 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
1 h 15 m
€83-135
NCE · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 10 m
€69-133
NCE · 6 km
BerlinBER
1 h 15 m
€136-255
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
1 h 55 m
€116-156
NCE · 6 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 35 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
6 h 20 m
€375-433
NCE · 6 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

MeasureCologneNice
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 m0 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)6 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneNice
City population1,024,621357,737
People per km²2,5304,975
Museums within 10 km4016
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre8465
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months

Where else could you go?

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