VacationSelector

Cologne or Philadelphia?

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 nature & day trips and good for families with your weighting.

Philadelphia
51
match

Wins on places to eat and sights concentration 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.

ColognePhiladelphia
Beaches & swimming. Cologne and Philadelphia are level on 0.
ColognePhiladelphia
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km401
Coast distance256 km13 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Philadelphia leads by 5 points.5
ColognePhiladelphia
Score7277
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1421,714
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3535
Museums & heritage. Cologne and Philadelphia are level on 60.
ColognePhiladelphia
Score6060
Museums within 10 km4789
Museums within 2 km of centre2748
Share of museums within 2 km %5754
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 5 points.5
ColognePhiladelphia
Score6459
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107930
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727575
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6662
Nightclubs within 4 km9041
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 22 points.22
ColognePhiladelphia
Score7149
Protected land share 50 km %5314
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10089
Park area within 2 km118 hectares75 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 19 points.19
ColognePhiladelphia
Score7253
Tourist attractions within 2 km4316
Park area within 2 km118 hectares75 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km64
Sights concentration. Philadelphia leads by 1 points.1
ColognePhiladelphia
Score5354
Notable places within 2 km8188
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cologne leads by 17 points.17
ColognePhiladelphia
Score6043
Price level global75.9100
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Cologne and Philadelphia are level on 60.
ColognePhiladelphia
Score6060
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C5.2 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm69 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
Philadelphia
5
7
12
18
24
28
31
30
26
20
13
8
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Philadelphia
79
69
101
88
86
103
111
109
112
88
74
101
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Philadelphia
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
Philadelphia
4
5
6
7
9
9
8
9
7
7
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). Philadelphia: 1991-2020 normals, Philadelphia International Airport (11.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromColognePhiladelphia
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
8 h 5 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
8 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
8 h 5 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
BerlinBER
1 h 15 m
€136-255
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
8 h 15 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
DohaDOH
6 h 15 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
13 h 30 m
no fares
PHL · 11 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

MeasureColognePhiladelphia
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 m12 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsPhiladelphia International Airport (PHL)11 km from centre128 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureColognePhiladelphia
City population1,024,6211,603,797
People per km²2,5304,339
Museums within 10 km4054
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre8475

Where else could you go?

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