Cologne or Paris?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on nature & day trips with your weighting.
Wins on sights concentration 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.
The verdict
Choose Paris if you want the walkable version of a city break: nearly everything worth seeing sits within walking distance of the centre, with the widest choice of restaurants, bars and museums.
Choose Cologne if you want a base rather than a destination: more protected countryside around it, more park space near the centre, 6 theme parks within reach, and a night out that stays close to the middle.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Cologne and Paris are level on 0.
| Cologne | Paris | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 0 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 40 | 2 |
| Coast distance | 256 km | 149 km |
| Water distance | — | — |
Places to eat. Paris leads by 18 points.18
| Cologne | Paris | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 72 | 90 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 1,142 | 4,732 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 35 | 33 |
Museums & heritage. Paris leads by 16 points.16
| Cologne | Paris | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 60 | 76 |
| Museums within 10 km | 47 | 185 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 27 | 65 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 57 | 35 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 3 | 4 |
Nightlife. Paris leads by 24 points.24
| Cologne | Paris | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 64 | 88 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 1,107 | 3,796 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 727 | 1,694 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 66 | 45 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 90 | 201 |
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 23 points.23
| Cologne | Paris | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 71 | 48 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 53 | 28 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 52 | 26 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 100 |
| Park area within 2 km | 118 hectares | 82 hectares |
Good for families. Paris leads by 3 points.3
| Cologne | Paris | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 72 | 75 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 43 | 89 |
| Park area within 2 km | 118 hectares | 82 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 6 | 3 |
Sights concentration. Paris leads by 41 points.41
| Cologne | Paris | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 53 | 94 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 81 | 865 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Paris leads by 2 points.2
| Cologne | Paris | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 60 | 62 |
| Price level global | 75.9 | 73.7 |
| Daily budget | €163 | €160 |
Year-round weather. Paris leads by 6 points.6
| Cologne | Paris | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 60 | 66 |
| Monthly daytime high | 6.3 °C to 25 °C | 7.8 °C to 26 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 48 mm to 81 mm | 38 mm to 75 mm |
| Dry months | 0 | 1 |
Where they differ
Cologne is the greener of the two: 53% of the land around it is protected against 28% around Paris, with somewhat more park space near the centre and 6 theme parks within reach against 3. Its drinking venues are mostly near the centre, so an evening needs little travel.
Paris packs many times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, and has roughly three times as many museums and drinking spots and twice as many nightclubs, though about half its bars sit away from the middle.
Where they are alike
Neither city is a swimming destination. Cologne has 40 stretches of water counted as beaches nearby against Paris's 2, but neither has a single month with sea at 21°C or more, so swimming is not what either trip is built around.
They are close on families and on cost, and their climates track each other: Germany and France carry near-identical national daily budgets, both cities work well with children, and highs run 6-25°C in Cologne against 8-26°C in Paris.
Which traveller are you?
A traveller with a long weekend and no wish to plan routes should take Paris: the concentration of notable places within walking distance of the centre, plus about three times as many museums, means each day fills itself.
Families with young children lean to Cologne: more park space near the centre and 6 theme parks within reach against 3. Paris counters with far more attractions near the centre, better for older children.
Anyone who wants countryside within a day's reach should pick Cologne, where 53% of the surrounding land is protected against 28% around Paris; day trips out of the city carry more weight than there.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €163 and €160, are national estimates for Germany and France, not measurements of either city. A large city can sit well above its own national average, by more than the gap between these two numbers, so nothing here tells you which trip costs more.
No weather station near Paris records sunshine hours, so that figure is missing rather than low, and the monthly weather picture there rests on temperature and rainfall alone; the sunshine side of the comparison is simply unmeasured. Cologne's warmest months are also its wettest, at 81mm, so summer there is warm but not dry.
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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Paris: 1991-2020 normals, Paris-Montsouris (4.6 km from centre).
Cologne is at its best in July and August, at 25°C, though those are also its wettest months, 81mm each, so an umbrella is part of the packing. June is the drier compromise at 76mm.
Paris holds a longer run, June through September, with highs of 24-26°C and rain closer to 51-58mm, so fewer days are interrupted. May is its wettest month at 75mm, wetter than the same month in Cologne, which makes late spring the one window where Cologne is the drier of the two.
Getting there
| Flying from | Cologne | Paris |
|---|---|---|
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 3 h 0 m €145-156 CGN · 15 km | 3 h 15 m €152-378 1 stop CDG · 22 km |
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 1 h 20 m no fares CGN · 15 km | 1 h 5 m €63-103 CDG · 22 km |
| AntalyaAYT | 3 h 30 m €204-239 1 stop CGN · 15 km | 3 h 45 m no fares CDG · 22 km |
| PalmaPMI | 2 h 10 m no fares CGN · 15 km | 1 h 50 m no fares ORY · 14 km |
| MunichMUC | 1 h 10 m no fares CGN · 15 km | 1 h 30 m €160-210 1 stop CDG · 22 km |
| MilanMXP, BGY, LIN | 1 h 20 m €81-121 CGN · 15 km | 1 h 20 m €61-89 CDG · 22 km |
| BarcelonaBCN | 2 h 0 m €77-159 CGN · 15 km | 1 h 40 m €110-135 CDG · 22 km |
| ViennaVIE | 1 h 35 m €126-182 CGN · 15 km | 1 h 55 m €153-171 CDG · 22 km |
| DubaiDXB, DWC | 6 h 35 m no fares DUS · 41 km | 6 h 50 m €292-389 1 stop CDG · 22 km |
| Fort-de-FranceFDF | 9 h 10 m no fares DUS · 41 km | 8 h 45 m no fares ORY · 14 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
| Measure | Cologne | Paris |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | German | French |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CF230 V, 50 Hz | CE230 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 112 |
| Elevation | 59 m | 27 m |
| Main airport | Cologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinations | Charles de Gaulle International Airport (CDG)22 km from centre277 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 11 days | 11 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Cologne | Paris |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 1,024,621 | 2,103,778 |
| People per km² | 2,530 | 19,960 |
| Museums within 10 km | 40 | 251 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 3 | 4 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 84 | 169 |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cologne or Paris somewhere new.