VacationSelector

Cologne or Vienna?

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 nature & day trips and good for families with your weighting.

Vienna
59
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage 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.

CologneVienna
Beaches & swimming. Cologne and Vienna are level on 0.
CologneVienna
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km4022
Coast distance256 km10,000 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Vienna leads by 5 points.5
CologneVienna
Score7277
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1421,617
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3537
Museums & heritage. Vienna leads by 21 points.21
CologneVienna
Score6081
Museums within 10 km47192
Museums within 2 km of centre27110
Share of museums within 2 km %5757
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Vienna leads by 10 points.10
CologneVienna
Score6474
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1071,948
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre7271,089
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6656
Nightclubs within 4 km90108
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 39 points.39
CologneVienna
Score7132
Protected land share 50 km %534
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares93 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 3 points.3
CologneVienna
Score7269
Tourist attractions within 2 km4346
Park area within 2 km118 hectares93 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km64
Sights concentration. Vienna leads by 22 points.22
CologneVienna
Score5375
Notable places within 2 km81287
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cologne leads by 1 points.1
CologneVienna
Score6059
Price level global75.976.9
Daily budget€163€160
Year-round weather. Vienna leads by 1 points.1
CologneVienna
Score6061
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C3.3 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm38 mm to 80 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
Vienna
3
6
11
17
21
25
27
27
21
15
9
4
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Vienna
42
38
52
42
80
70
78
71
64
47
46
46
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Vienna
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
Vienna
2
4
5
7
8
8
9
9
6
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Vienna: 1991-2020 normals, Wien / Hohe Warte (4.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneVienna
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
2 h 5 m
€121-285
VIE · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 10 m
€105-189
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
2 h 40 m
€135-192
VIE · 18 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
VIE · 18 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 5 m
€230-294
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
2 h 15 m
€117-169
VIE · 18 km
BerlinBER
1 h 15 m
€136-255
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
1 h 15 m
€171-190
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
1 h 25 m
€49-71
VIE · 18 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 10 m
€174-186
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
1 h 25 m
€170-237
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
HurghadaHRG
4 h 45 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
VIE · 18 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

MeasureCologneVienna
Official languageGermanGerman, Austrian Sign Language
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 m151 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsVienna International Airport (VIE)18 km from centre204 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneVienna
City population1,024,6212,028,289
People per km²2,5304,890
Museums within 10 km40152
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre84113

Where else could you go?

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