VacationSelector

Cologne or Osaka?

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 sights concentration with your weighting.

Osaka
✓ Best match
65
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.

CologneOsaka
Beaches & swimming. Osaka leads by 55 points.55
CologneOsaka
Score055
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km4025
Coast distance256 km7 km
Water distance7 km
Places to eat. Osaka leads by 18 points.18
CologneOsaka
Score7290
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1429,134
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3525
Museums & heritage. Osaka leads by 4 points.4
CologneOsaka
Score6064
Museums within 10 km4778
Museums within 2 km of centre2722
Share of museums within 2 km %5728
Unesco sites within 50 km36
Nightlife. Osaka leads by 33 points.33
CologneOsaka
Score6497
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1078,473
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre7274,492
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6653
Nightclubs within 4 km9097
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 43 points.43
CologneOsaka
Score7128
Protected land share 50 km %531
Landscape blanket share 50 km %521
Land share of disc %10084
Park area within 2 km118 hectares88 hectares
Good for families. Cologne and Osaka are level on 72.
CologneOsaka
Score7272
Tourist attractions within 2 km4347
Park area within 2 km118 hectares88 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km67
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 5 points.5
CologneOsaka
Score5348
Notable places within 2 km8163
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Osaka leads by 10 points.10
CologneOsaka
Score6070
Price level global75.962.4
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Osaka leads by 3 points.3
CologneOsaka
Score6063
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C9.7 °C to 33.6 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm47 mm to 185 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
Osaka
10
11
14
20
25
28
32
34
30
24
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Osaka
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Osaka
47
61
103
103
136
185
175
113
146
140
73
56
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Osaka
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Osaka
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
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). Osaka: 1991-2020 normals, Osaka (1.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneOsaka
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
KIX · 38 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
11 h 30 m
no fares
KIX · 38 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 38 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
12 h 5 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
HamburgHAM, XFW, LBC
1 h 5 m
€250-293
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
11 h 5 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
55 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
11 h 30 m
€1,507-1966
2 stops
ITM · 11 km
Abu DhabiAUH
6 h 30 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
9 h 40 m
€810-860
3 stops
KIX · 38 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

MeasureCologneOsaka
Official languageGermanJapanese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yen (JPY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number112Police 110, fire 119
Elevation59 m20 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsKansai International Airport (KIX)38 km from centre62 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneOsaka
City population1,024,6212,751,862
People per km²2,53012,340
Museums within 10 km4043
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km36
Distinct cuisines in the centre8497
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

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