VacationSelector

Cologne or Warsaw?

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 nightlife with your weighting.

Warsaw
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

CologneWarsaw
Beaches & swimming. Cologne and Warsaw are level on 0.
CologneWarsaw
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km4026
Coast distance256 km238 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Cologne and Warsaw are level on 72.
CologneWarsaw
Score7272
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1421,222
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3534
Museums & heritage. Warsaw leads by 3 points.3
CologneWarsaw
Score6063
Museums within 10 km47107
Museums within 2 km of centre2760
Share of museums within 2 km %5756
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 2 points.2
CologneWarsaw
Score6462
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1071,005
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727648
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6664
Nightclubs within 4 km90104
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 16 points.16
CologneWarsaw
Score7155
Protected land share 50 km %5327
Landscape blanket share 50 km %5219
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares107 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 2 points.2
CologneWarsaw
Score7270
Tourist attractions within 2 km4342
Park area within 2 km118 hectares107 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km65
Sights concentration. Warsaw leads by 23 points.23
CologneWarsaw
Score5376
Notable places within 2 km81299
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Warsaw leads by 19 points.19
CologneWarsaw
Score6079
Price level global75.949
Daily budget€163€133
Year-round weather. Cologne leads by 1 points.1
CologneWarsaw
Score6059
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C0.9 °C to 25.2 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm29 mm to 83 mm
Dry months06
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
Warsaw
1
3
7
15
20
23
25
25
19
13
7
2
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Warsaw
31
29
29
36
56
63
83
63
50
40
36
37
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Warsaw
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Warsaw
1
2
5
8
9
11
11
10
8
5
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). Warsaw: 1991-2020 normals, Warszawa-Okecie (7.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneWarsaw
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
WAW · 8 km
HurghadaHRG
4 h 45 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
4 h 10 m
no fares
WAW · 8 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

MeasureCologneWarsaw
Official languageGermanPolish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Zloty (PLN)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation59 m118 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsWarsaw Chopin Airport (WAW)8 km from centre170 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneWarsaw
City population1,024,6211,862,402
People per km²2,5303,601
Museums within 10 km40117
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre8476

Where else could you go?

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