VacationSelector

Cologne or Salzburg?

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 nightlife with your weighting.

Salzburg
42
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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.

CologneSalzburg
Beaches & swimming. Cologne and Salzburg are level on 0.
CologneSalzburg
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km409
Coast distance256 km653 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 23 points.23
CologneSalzburg
Score7249
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142348
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3523
Museums & heritage. Cologne and Salzburg are level on 60.
CologneSalzburg
Score6060
Museums within 10 km4742
Museums within 2 km of centre2727
Share of museums within 2 km %5764
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 28 points.28
CologneSalzburg
Score6436
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107294
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727241
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6682
Nightclubs within 4 km9016
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 44 points.44
CologneSalzburg
Score7127
Protected land share 50 km %536
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 24 points.24
CologneSalzburg
Score7248
Tourist attractions within 2 km4317
Park area within 2 km118 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km64
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 7 points.7
CologneSalzburg
Score5346
Notable places within 2 km8154
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cologne leads by 1 points.1
CologneSalzburg
Score6059
Price level global75.976.9
Daily budget€163€160
Year-round weather. Cologne leads by 6 points.6
CologneSalzburg
Score6054
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C3.4 °C to 24.9 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm47 mm to 168 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
Salzburg
3
6
10
16
20
23
25
25
20
15
8
4
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Salzburg
62
47
83
80
142
168
159
167
127
90
70
67
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Salzburg
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Salzburg
3
3
5
6
7
7
7
7
5
4
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Salzburg: 1991-2020 normals, Salzburg (3.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneSalzburg
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
LNZ · 98 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
SZG · 3 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
2 h 20 m
€220-358
1 stop
SZG · 3 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
1 h 55 m
€166-216
MUC · 112 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 55 m
€186-283
SZG · 3 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
1 h 5 m
€183-262
1 stop
MUC · 112 km
MadridMAD
2 h 20 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
2 h 25 m
€227-312
1 stop
MUC · 112 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 30 m
€141-202
MUC · 112 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
1 h 30 m
€183-250
MUC · 112 km
HurghadaHRG
4 h 45 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
SZG · 3 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 2026-08 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

MeasureCologneSalzburg
Official languageGermanGerman, Austrian Sign Language
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation59 m424 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsSalzburg Airport (SZG)3 km from centre62 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneSalzburg
City population1,024,621155,021
People per km²2,5302,360
Museums within 10 km4038
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre8450

Where else could you go?

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