VacationSelector

Cologne or Porto?

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 good for families with your weighting.

Porto
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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.

ColognePorto
Beaches & swimming. Porto leads by 60 points.60
ColognePorto
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km4052
Coast distance256 km4 km
Water distance3 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 4 points.4
ColognePorto
Score7268
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1421,172
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3527
Museums & heritage. Porto leads by 11 points.11
ColognePorto
Score6071
Museums within 10 km47101
Museums within 2 km of centre2757
Share of museums within 2 km %5756
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 6 points.6
ColognePorto
Score6458
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107900
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727570
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6663
Nightclubs within 4 km9038
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 38 points.38
ColognePorto
Score7133
Protected land share 50 km %537
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10061
Park area within 2 km118 hectares30 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 7 points.7
ColognePorto
Score7265
Tourist attractions within 2 km43122
Park area within 2 km118 hectares30 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km61
Sights concentration. Porto leads by 1 points.1
ColognePorto
Score5354
Notable places within 2 km8185
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Porto leads by 14 points.14
ColognePorto
Score6074
Price level global75.955.9
Daily budget€163€109
Year-round weather. Porto leads by 11 points.11
ColognePorto
Score6071
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C13.8 °C to 25.2 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm22 mm to 181 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
Porto
14
15
18
18
21
23
25
25
24
20
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Porto
14
13
14
14
16
17
17
17
17
17
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Porto
151
97
104
99
89
35
22
33
75
158
181
173
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Porto
10
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
Porto
5
5
7
8
9
9
10
9
8
5
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Porto: 1991-2020 normals, Porto / Serra Do Pilar (2.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromColognePorto
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 10 m
€90-144
1 stop
OPO · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
2 h 5 m
€88-127
OPO · 12 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
OPO · 12 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
4 h 20 m
€235-292
1 stop
OPO · 12 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
1 h 45 m
€81-135
OPO · 12 km
MadridMAD
2 h 20 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
1 h 10 m
€70-124
OPO · 12 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 50 m
€203-369
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
1 h 0 m
€81
OPO · 12 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
OPO · 12 km
GenevaGVA
1 h 20 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
2 h 10 m
€128-166
1 stop
OPO · 12 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 35 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
OPO · 12 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

MeasureColognePorto
Official languageGermanPortuguese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation59 m104 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsFrancisco de Sá Carneiro Airport (OPO)12 km from centre132 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureColognePorto
City population1,024,621231,800
People per km²2,5305,599
Museums within 10 km4042
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre8470
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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