VacationSelector

Cologne or York?

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

York
41
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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.

CologneYork
Beaches & swimming. Cologne and York are level on 0.
CologneYork
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km402
Coast distance256 km50 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 18 points.18
CologneYork
Score7254
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142361
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3531
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 14 points.14
CologneYork
Score6046
Museums within 10 km4718
Museums within 2 km of centre2716
Share of museums within 2 km %5789
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 21 points.21
CologneYork
Score6443
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107450
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727353
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6678
Nightclubs within 4 km9014
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 38 points.38
CologneYork
Score7133
Protected land share 50 km %5317
Landscape blanket share 50 km %5216
Land share of disc %10095
Park area within 2 km118 hectares42 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 29 points.29
CologneYork
Score7243
Tourist attractions within 2 km4313
Park area within 2 km118 hectares42 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km63
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 14 points.14
CologneYork
Score5339
Notable places within 2 km8137
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cologne leads by 6 points.6
CologneYork
Score6054
Price level global75.984.9
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Cologne leads by 4 points.4
CologneYork
Score6056
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C6.7 °C to 20.9 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm39 mm to 66 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
York
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
20
18
14
10
7
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
York
53
44
39
48
43
61
56
65
58
66
62
60
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
York
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
York
2
3
4
5
6
5
6
5
4
3
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). York: 1991-2020 normals, Leeming (47.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneYork
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
4 h 20 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
55 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
BridgetownBGI
9 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
AgadirAGA
3 h 50 m
no fares
NRN · 93 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
LBA · 39 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

MeasureCologneYork
Official languageGermanEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation59 m25 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsLeeds Bradford Airport (LBA)39 km from centre73 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneYork
City population1,024,621208,400
People per km²2,530766
Museums within 10 km4024
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre8454

Where else could you go?

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