VacationSelector

Cologne or Thessaloniki?

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, 2 points apart

Cologne
57
match

Wins on good for families and places to eat with your weighting.

Thessaloniki
59
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

CologneThessaloniki
Beaches & swimming. Thessaloniki leads by 55 points.55
CologneThessaloniki
Score055
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km404
Coast distance256 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 22 points.22
CologneThessaloniki
Score7250
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142640
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3515
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 11 points.11
CologneThessaloniki
Score6049
Museums within 10 km4734
Museums within 2 km of centre2722
Share of museums within 2 km %5765
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Thessaloniki leads by 3 points.3
CologneThessaloniki
Score6467
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1071,407
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727805
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6657
Nightclubs within 4 km9061
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 6 points.6
CologneThessaloniki
Score7165
Protected land share 50 km %5325
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10083
Park area within 2 km118 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 31 points.31
CologneThessaloniki
Score7241
Tourist attractions within 2 km4316
Park area within 2 km118 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km61
Sights concentration. Thessaloniki leads by 3 points.3
CologneThessaloniki
Score5356
Notable places within 2 km8198
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Thessaloniki leads by 14 points.14
CologneThessaloniki
Score6074
Price level global75.955.8
Daily budget€163€125
Year-round weather. Thessaloniki leads by 12 points.12
CologneThessaloniki
Score6072
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C9.7 °C to 32.1 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm21 mm to 56 mm
Dry months09
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
Thessaloniki
10
11
15
19
25
30
32
32
27
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Thessaloniki
14
13
13
15
19
23
26
27
25
21
18
15
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Thessaloniki
35
32
38
36
44
30
23
21
33
41
38
56
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Thessaloniki
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Thessaloniki
4
4
6
6
9
11
11
10
8
6
4
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). Thessaloniki: 1991-2020 normals, Thessaloniki Airport (14 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneThessaloniki
AthensATH
3 h 0 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 0 m
€97-118
SKG · 14 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
1 h 15 m
€151-156
SKG · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
3 h 15 m
€95-156
SKG · 14 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 10 m
€188-242
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
1 h 50 m
€125-175
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
HeraklionHER
3 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
BerlinBER
1 h 15 m
€136-255
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
2 h 25 m
€156-243
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
LarnacaLCA
3 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 0 m
€105-145
SKG · 14 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
2 h 10 m
€129-217
SKG · 14 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 20 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
2 h 20 m
€208-315
1 stop
SKG · 14 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

MeasureCologneThessaloniki
Official languageGermanGreek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation59 m6 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsThessaloniki Macedonia International Airport (SKG)14 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneThessaloniki
City population1,024,621309,617
People per km²2,53016,042
Museums within 10 km4031
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre8445
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

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