VacationSelector

Cologne or Strasbourg?

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.

Strasbourg
47
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

The verdict

Choose Cologne if you want the bigger city trip: theme parks and attractions for children, more museums, and a much wider choice of bars and clubs, with more protected countryside within reach for days out.

Choose Strasbourg if you prefer a compact centre you can walk, with its notable buildings and museums close together, slightly warmer summers and drier winter months.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

CologneStrasbourg
Beaches & swimming. Cologne and Strasbourg are level on 0.
CologneStrasbourg
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km409
Coast distance256 km398 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 5 points.5
CologneStrasbourg
Score7267
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142780
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3536
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 19 points.19
CologneStrasbourg
Score6041
Museums within 10 km4723
Museums within 2 km of centre2714
Share of museums within 2 km %5761
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 28 points.28
CologneStrasbourg
Score6436
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107305
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727264
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6687
Nightclubs within 4 km9017
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 17 points.17
CologneStrasbourg
Score7154
Protected land share 50 km %5337
Landscape blanket share 50 km %5235
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares71 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 34 points.34
CologneStrasbourg
Score7238
Tourist attractions within 2 km439
Park area within 2 km118 hectares71 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km61
Sights concentration. Strasbourg leads by 5 points.5
CologneStrasbourg
Score5358
Notable places within 2 km81109
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Strasbourg leads by 2 points.2
CologneStrasbourg
Score6062
Price level global75.973.7
Daily budget€163€160
Year-round weather. Strasbourg leads by 3 points.3
CologneStrasbourg
Score6063
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C5.2 °C to 26.4 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm34 mm to 77 mm
Dry months03
0255075100

Where they differ

Cologne is the stronger choice for families, with 6 theme parks within reach against Strasbourg's 1, many more attractions near the centre and about twice as much park space. Nights out are on another scale, with around three times as many places to drink and far more clubs, and it has about twice as many museums.

Strasbourg concentrates more of its notable places within walking distance of the centre, and its museums sit more tightly around it, so more of a short stay happens on foot.

Where they are alike

Neither is a place to swim. Both sit inland, and neither has a month with sea at 21°C or more, so summer in either is about streets, parks and museums.

They are close elsewhere too. Summer highs reach 25°C in Cologne and 26°C in Strasbourg, and winter stays similar at both. Their national price levels are near identical, and the two offer a similar range of kitchens, with Cologne holding somewhat more restaurants near the centre.

Which traveller are you?

Travelling with children: Cologne, comfortably. It has 6 theme parks within reach against Strasbourg's 1, far more attractions close to the centre, and roughly twice the park space for days that need somewhere to run.

Out late, then a museum in the morning: Cologne again. It has around three times as many places to drink, many more clubs, and about twice as many museums to work through.

A short trip made on foot: Strasbourg. More of its notable places sit within walking distance of the centre, its museums cluster tightly, and winter months are drier, 34-39mm against Cologne's wetter ones.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €163 for Germany and €160 for France, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels, not measurements of either city. A large or heavily visited city can sit further from its own country's average than the two figures sit from each other, so the gap says nothing about which trip costs more.

Beaches read oddly here: 40 are counted near Cologne against a handful near Strasbourg, yet neither has a month with sea at 21°C or more. Cologne's warmest months are also its wettest, so the warmest window is not the dry one.

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
Strasbourg
5
7
12
17
21
24
26
26
22
16
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Strasbourg
35
34
39
42
77
68
72
61
55
59
47
45
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Strasbourg
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Strasbourg
2
3
5
6
7
7
8
7
6
3
2
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). Strasbourg: 1991-2020 normals, Strasbourg (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Cologne's window is June to August, with highs of 23-25°C, though midsummer is also its wettest stretch at 81mm a month. May is the one month it comes out drier than Strasbourg, 60mm against 77mm.

Strasbourg is the steadier pick through the year. Its summers run a little warmer, up to 26°C, and early autumn holds up well. Winter and early spring are clearly drier there, 34-39mm a month from January to March against 53-64mm in Cologne.

Getting there

Flying fromCologneStrasbourg
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
FKB · 33 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
FKB · 33 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
SXB · 10 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SXB · 10 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
55 m
no fares
STR · 109 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
1 h 45 m
€133-212
1 stop
SXB · 10 km
NiceNCE
1 h 35 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 20 m
€81-198
SXB · 10 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
1 h 20 m
€174-248
STR · 109 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 30 m
€112-124
CGN · 15 km
2 h 15 m
€136-156
FKB · 33 km
HurghadaHRG
4 h 45 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
4 h 25 m
no fares
STR · 109 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

MeasureCologneStrasbourg
Official languageGermanFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation59 m132 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsStrasbourg Airport (SXB)10 km from centre42 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneStrasbourg
City population1,024,621293,771
People per km²2,5303,752
Museums within 10 km4021
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre8487

Where else could you go?

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