VacationSelector

Cologne or Santiago de Compostela?

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 good for families and nightlife with your weighting.

Santiago de Compostela
42
match

Wins on value for money 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.

CologneSantiago de Compostela
Beaches & swimming. Cologne and Santiago de Compostela are level on 0.
CologneSantiago de Compostela
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km400
Coast distance256 km26 km
Water distance26 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 24 points.24
CologneSantiago de Compostela
Score7248
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142336
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3523
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 16 points.16
CologneSantiago de Compostela
Score6044
Museums within 10 km4716
Museums within 2 km of centre2714
Share of museums within 2 km %5788
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 28 points.28
CologneSantiago de Compostela
Score6436
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107306
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727268
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6688
Nightclubs within 4 km9013
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 25 points.25
CologneSantiago de Compostela
Score7146
Protected land share 50 km %5311
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10092
Park area within 2 km118 hectares109 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 45 points.45
CologneSantiago de Compostela
Score7227
Tourist attractions within 2 km432
Park area within 2 km118 hectares109 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km60
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 11 points.11
CologneSantiago de Compostela
Score5342
Notable places within 2 km8144
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Santiago de Compostela leads by 11 points.11
CologneSantiago de Compostela
Score6071
Price level global75.960.8
Daily budget€163€122
Year-round weather. Santiago de Compostela leads by 2 points.2
CologneSantiago de Compostela
Score6062
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C11.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm41 mm to 223 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
Santiago de Compostela
11
13
15
17
20
23
25
25
23
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Santiago de Compostela
14
13
13
14
15
16
17
17
17
16
15
14
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Santiago de Compostela
217
149
153
136
116
61
41
61
91
208
223
222
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Santiago de Compostela
9
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
Santiago de Compostela
3
4
5
6
7
7
8
8
6
4
3
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Santiago de Compostela: 1991-2020 normals, Santiago / Labacolla (8.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneSantiago de Compostela
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
1 h 40 m
€71-184
SCQ · 10 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
MadridMAD
2 h 20 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
1 h 15 m
€86-122
SCQ · 10 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 30 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 30 m
€112-124
CGN · 15 km
1 h 40 m
€218-283
1 stop
SCQ · 10 km
SevillaSVQ
2 h 50 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
Las PalmasLPA
4 h 25 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 35 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 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

MeasureCologneSantiago de Compostela
Official languageGermanSpanish
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 m260 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsSantiago-Rosalía de Castro Airport (SCQ)10 km from centre27 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneSantiago de Compostela
City population1,024,621100,965
People per km²2,530459
Museums within 10 km406
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre8438
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 Santiago de Compostela 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.