VacationSelector

Cologne or Zadar?

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 places to eat and good for families with your weighting.

Zadar
47
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.

CologneZadar
Beaches & swimming. Zadar leads by 73 points.73
CologneZadar
Score073
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km4049
Coast distance256 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 47 points.47
CologneZadar
Score7225
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142143
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3511
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 27 points.27
CologneZadar
Score6033
Museums within 10 km478
Museums within 2 km of centre278
Share of museums within 2 km %57100
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 39 points.39
CologneZadar
Score6425
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107194
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727139
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6672
Nightclubs within 4 km904
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 16 points.16
CologneZadar
Score7155
Protected land share 50 km %5312
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10047
Park area within 2 km118 hectares30 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 41 points.41
CologneZadar
Score7231
Tourist attractions within 2 km439
Park area within 2 km118 hectares30 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km61
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 22 points.22
CologneZadar
Score5331
Notable places within 2 km8123
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Zadar leads by 20 points.20
CologneZadar
Score6080
Price level global75.948.5
Daily budget€163€138
Year-round weather. Zadar leads by 9 points.9
CologneZadar
Score6069
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C10.4 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm25 mm to 117 mm
Dry months02
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
Zadar
10
11
15
19
23
28
31
31
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Zadar
14
13
13
14
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Zadar
73
64
59
62
58
49
25
32
82
80
117
99
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Zadar
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Zadar
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Zadar: 1999-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Zadar / Zemunik (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneZadar
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ZAD · 10 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
1 h 10 m
€45-192
ZAD · 10 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 5 m
€294
SPU · 107 km
AmsterdamAMS
55 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
2 h 10 m
€186-201
1 stop
SPU · 107 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
ZAD · 10 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
2 h 5 m
€169-225
SPU · 107 km
BerlinBER
1 h 15 m
€136-255
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
1 h 45 m
€156-284
ZAD · 10 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 30 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SPU · 107 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

MeasureCologneZadar
Official languageGermanCroatian
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 m5 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsZadar Airport (ZAD)10 km from centre67 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneZadar
City population1,024,62170,779
People per km²2,530
Museums within 10 km401
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre8417
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months

Where else could you go?

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