VacationSelector

Copenhagen or Gdansk?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Copenhagen
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration with your weighting.

Gdansk
56
match

Wins on value for money and good for families with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Copenhagen if the trip is the city itself: museums, a large choice of restaurants and a nightlife of real size, nearly all of it walkable from the centre.

Choose Gdansk if you are travelling with children or want time outdoors: more attractions near the centre, more theme parks within reach, more protected land around the city and 20 beaches close by.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

CopenhagenGdansk
Beaches & swimming. Gdansk leads by 1 points.1
CopenhagenGdansk
Score5455
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1720
Coast distance1 km1 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. Copenhagen leads by 21 points.21
CopenhagenGdansk
Score7352
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,183348
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3728
Museums & heritage. Copenhagen leads by 18 points.18
CopenhagenGdansk
Score7557
Museums within 10 km8343
Museums within 2 km of centre5128
Share of museums within 2 km %6165
Unesco sites within 50 km52
Nightlife. Copenhagen leads by 31 points.31
CopenhagenGdansk
Score6736
Drinking venues within 4 km1,384269
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre806203
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5875
Nightclubs within 4 km6430
Nature & day trips. Copenhagen leads by 5 points.5
CopenhagenGdansk
Score5045
Protected land share 50 km %512
Landscape blanket share 50 km %03
Land share of disc %3970
Park area within 2 km138 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Gdansk leads by 4 points.4
CopenhagenGdansk
Score7175
Tourist attractions within 2 km54108
Park area within 2 km138 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km23
Sights concentration. Copenhagen leads by 22 points.22
CopenhagenGdansk
Score7452
Notable places within 2 km27376
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Gdansk leads by 27 points.27
CopenhagenGdansk
Score5279
Price level global87.849
Daily budget€214€133
Year-round weather. Copenhagen leads by 3 points.3
CopenhagenGdansk
Score5552
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 22.7 °C0.7 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall28 mm to 74 mm37 mm to 87 mm
Dry months33
0255075100

Where they differ

Copenhagen has about three times as many restaurants near the centre and a somewhat wider range of kitchens, plus about three times as many notable places within walking distance. It also has about twice as many museums, and many times as many places to drink, with roughly twice as many nightclubs.

Gdansk has about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre and 3 theme parks within reach against Copenhagen's 2. Around it, 12% of the land is protected against 5%. Poland's national daily estimate is €133, Denmark's €214.

Where they are alike

Beaches are the closest call: the sea is 1km from both centres, 20 beaches near Gdansk against 17 near Copenhagen, and neither has a month of sea at 21°C or more.

The rest tracks closely too. Year-round temperatures follow each other through the seasons, both cities work for families, with theme parks within reach and park space in town, and neither has a large amount of protected countryside immediately around it.

Which traveller are you?

A traveller here for museums, dinner and a long evening should take Copenhagen: more museums, far more restaurants near the centre, many more bars and clubs, and most of it within walking distance.

Families lean towards Gdansk, with about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre and 3 theme parks within reach against 2. Copenhagen answers with more park space in town, so the gap is narrow.

For time outdoors, Gdansk again: 12% of the surrounding land is protected against 5%, and 20 beaches sit by a sea that reaches 19°C in August.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures are national estimates of restaurant and hotel prices, €214 for Denmark and €133 for Poland, not measurements of either city. A capital or a heavily visited city can sit far from its own country's average, by more than the gap between the two, so read them as country context rather than a cost comparison.

No weather station near Copenhagen records sunshine hours, so that side of the weather comparison is unmeasured; its monthly picture rests on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone. And Gdansk's warmest months are also its wettest, July at 87mm, so a strong summer rating is not a promise of dry days.

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
Copenhagen
4
4
7
12
17
20
23
22
18
13
8
5
Gdansk
1
2
6
12
17
20
22
22
18
12
7
3
Sea temperature, °C
Copenhagen
3
2
3
6
10
14
17
18
15
12
9
5
Gdansk
4
3
3
5
10
14
18
19
17
13
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Copenhagen
44
32
30
28
47
60
59
74
59
61
49
47
Gdansk
47
37
40
37
59
68
87
78
74
71
54
55
Daylight, hours per day
Copenhagen
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
8
7
Gdansk
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Copenhagen
No sunshine record
Gdansk
1
2
5
7
8
8
8
8
6
4
1
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Copenhagen: 1991-2020 normals, Koebenhavn / Landbohoejskolen (2.4 km from centre). Gdansk: 1991-2020 normals, Gdansk-Rebiechowo (12.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Copenhagen peaks in July at 23°C with 59mm of rain, and September still reaches 18°C on drier ground than Gdansk's 74mm. April and May are the driest months here, at 28mm and 47mm, with highs of 12-17°C.

Gdansk runs June to August at 20-22°C, with the sea warmest in August at 19°C. July is its wettest month at 87mm, so August, a little drier at 78mm, is the safer half of summer for a trip built around the water.

Getting there

Flying fromCopenhagenGdansk
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 50 m
€55-95
CPH · 8 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
OsloOSL, TRF
1 h 15 m
no fares
CPH · 8 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 20 m
€90-98
1 stop
CPH · 8 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€167-221
CPH · 8 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
1 h 25 m
€58-87
CPH · 8 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 50 m
€70-135
CPH · 8 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
BergenBGO
1 h 30 m
no fares
CPH · 8 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 30 m
€153-210
1 stop
CPH · 8 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 45 m
€94-138
1 stop
CPH · 8 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
HurghadaHRG
4 h 55 m
no fares
CPH · 8 km
4 h 30 m
no fares
GDN · 13 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

MeasureCopenhagenGdansk
Official languageDanishPolish
CurrencyDanish Krone (DKK)Zloty (PLN)
SocketsCEFK230 V, 50 HzCE50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation14 m11 m
Main airportCopenhagen Kastrup Airport (CPH)8 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsGdańsk Lech Wałęsa Airport (GDN)13 km from centre65 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCopenhagenGdansk
City population667,099487,834
People per km²7,339714
Museums within 10 km7237
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km52
Distinct cuisines in the centre8248
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Copenhagen or Gdansk 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

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.