VacationSelector

Cologne or San Francisco?

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 value for money and museums & heritage with your weighting.

San Francisco
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

CologneSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 60 points.60
CologneSan Francisco
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km4044
Coast distance256 km2 km
Water distance2 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 11 points.11
CologneSan Francisco
Score7283
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1422,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3539
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 16 points.16
CologneSan Francisco
Score6044
Museums within 10 km4757
Museums within 2 km of centre2729
Share of museums within 2 km %5751
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 4 points.4
CologneSan Francisco
Score6468
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1071,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6665
Nightclubs within 4 km9097
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 11 points.11
CologneSan Francisco
Score7160
Protected land share 50 km %5317
Landscape blanket share 50 km %524
Land share of disc %10057
Park area within 2 km118 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 15 points.15
CologneSan Francisco
Score7257
Tourist attractions within 2 km4348
Park area within 2 km118 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km61
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 10 points.10
CologneSan Francisco
Score5363
Notable places within 2 km81147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cologne leads by 17 points.17
CologneSan Francisco
Score6043
Price level global75.9100
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 18 points.18
CologneSan Francisco
Score6078
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months07
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
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
San Francisco
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneSan Francisco
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
55 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 50 m
€203-369
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
12 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 10 m
€174-186
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 35 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 18 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

MeasureCologneSan Francisco
Official languageGerman
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation59 m16 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneSan Francisco
City population1,024,621873,965
People per km²2,5301,455
Museums within 10 km4050
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre84108
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 San Francisco 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.