VacationSelector

Cologne or Sao Paulo?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Cologne
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Sao Paulo
56
match

Wins on year-round weather 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.

CologneSao Paulo
Beaches & swimming. Cologne and Sao Paulo are level on 0.
CologneSao Paulo
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km400
Coast distance256 km51 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Sao Paulo leads by 1 points.1
CologneSao Paulo
Score7273
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1421,735
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3527
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 17 points.17
CologneSao Paulo
Score6043
Museums within 10 km4782
Museums within 2 km of centre2726
Share of museums within 2 km %5732
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Sao Paulo leads by 8 points.8
CologneSao Paulo
Score6472
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1071,747
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727896
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6651
Nightclubs within 4 km90118
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 20 points.20
CologneSao Paulo
Score7151
Protected land share 50 km %5326
Landscape blanket share 50 km %5215
Land share of disc %10095
Park area within 2 km118 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 17 points.17
CologneSao Paulo
Score7255
Tourist attractions within 2 km4338
Park area within 2 km118 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km61
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 3 points.3
CologneSao Paulo
Score5350
Notable places within 2 km8168
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sao Paulo leads by 21 points.21
CologneSao Paulo
Score6081
Price level global75.946.1
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Sao Paulo leads by 23 points.23
CologneSao Paulo
Score6083
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C22.8 °C to 29.2 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm26 mm to 297 mm
Dry months01
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
Sao Paulo
28
29
28
27
24
23
23
25
25
27
27
28
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Sao Paulo
297
259
206
89
64
55
53
26
82
128
146
234
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sao Paulo
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Sao Paulo
4
6
6
5
5
5
6
6
5
6
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). Sao Paulo: 1991-2020 normals, Sao Paulo (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneSao Paulo
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
13 h 5 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
12 h 15 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
MadridMAD
2 h 20 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
10 h 30 m
€739-741
GRU · 21 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 50 m
€203-369
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 10 m
€174-186
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
PortoOPO
2 h 35 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
10 h 15 m
no fares
GRU · 21 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

MeasureCologneSao Paulo
Official languageGermanPortuguese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Brazilian Real (BRL)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCN60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-3
Emergency number112Police 190, ambulance 192, fire 193
Elevation59 m760 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsSão Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU)21 km from centre102 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneSao Paulo
City population1,024,62111,451,999
People per km²2,5307,519
Museums within 10 km4090
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre8459

Where else could you go?

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