VacationSelector

Cologne or Stockholm?

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.

Stockholm
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration 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.

CologneStockholm
Beaches & swimming. Stockholm leads by 60 points.60
CologneStockholm
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km4073
Coast distance256 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Stockholm leads by 4 points.4
CologneStockholm
Score7276
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1421,558
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3536
Museums & heritage. Stockholm leads by 9 points.9
CologneStockholm
Score6069
Museums within 10 km4774
Museums within 2 km of centre2747
Share of museums within 2 km %5764
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Cologne and Stockholm are level on 64.
CologneStockholm
Score6464
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1071,090
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727689
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6663
Nightclubs within 4 km90106
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 30 points.30
CologneStockholm
Score7141
Protected land share 50 km %537
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10077
Park area within 2 km118 hectares104 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 15 points.15
CologneStockholm
Score7257
Tourist attractions within 2 km4323
Park area within 2 km118 hectares104 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km62
Sights concentration. Stockholm leads by 26 points.26
CologneStockholm
Score5379
Notable places within 2 km81357
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cologne leads by 3 points.3
CologneStockholm
Score6057
Price level global75.980.3
Daily budget€163€169
Year-round weather. Cologne leads by 7 points.7
CologneStockholm
Score6053
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C1 °C to 23.6 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm27 mm to 66 mm
Dry months05
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
Stockholm
1
1
5
11
17
21
24
22
17
10
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Stockholm
3
2
2
3
7
12
16
17
14
10
7
5
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Stockholm
37
29
27
29
34
61
60
66
53
51
47
47
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Stockholm
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Stockholm
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
6
3
1
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Stockholm: 1991-2020 normals, Stockholm Observatoriet (26.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneStockholm
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 25 m
€89-139
ARN · 36 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
3 h 15 m
€138-141
ARN · 36 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
3 h 35 m
€193
ARN · 36 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
ARN · 36 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 15 m
€202-238
1 stop
ARN · 36 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 25 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
1 h 20 m
€84-99
ARN · 36 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
2 h 10 m
€86
ARN · 36 km
OsloOSL, TRF
1 h 50 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
1 h 5 m
€77-102
1 stop
ARN · 36 km
HelsinkiHEL
2 h 25 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
1 h 10 m
€66-74
ARN · 36 km
HurghadaHRG
4 h 45 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
5 h 10 m
no fares
ARN · 36 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

MeasureCologneStockholm
Official languageGermanSwedish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swedish Krona (SEK)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation59 m22 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsStockholm-Arlanda Airport (ARN)36 km from centre172 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneStockholm
City population1,024,621984,748
People per km²2,5305,260
Museums within 10 km40266
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre8481
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 Stockholm 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.