VacationSelector

Copenhagen or Lucerne?

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 beaches & swimming and nightlife with your weighting.

Lucerne
33
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.

CopenhagenLucerne
Beaches & swimming. Copenhagen leads by 54 points.54
CopenhagenLucerne
Score540
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1716
Coast distance1 km669 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Copenhagen leads by 26 points.26
CopenhagenLucerne
Score7347
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,183269
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3725
Museums & heritage. Copenhagen leads by 35 points.35
CopenhagenLucerne
Score7540
Museums within 10 km8323
Museums within 2 km of centre5113
Share of museums within 2 km %6157
Unesco sites within 50 km51
Nightlife. Copenhagen leads by 39 points.39
CopenhagenLucerne
Score6728
Drinking venues within 4 km1,384202
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre806151
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5875
Nightclubs within 4 km6411
Nature & day trips. Copenhagen leads by 25 points.25
CopenhagenLucerne
Score5025
Protected land share 50 km %57
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %39100
Park area within 2 km138 hectares29 hectares
Good for families. Copenhagen leads by 33 points.33
CopenhagenLucerne
Score7138
Tourist attractions within 2 km5415
Park area within 2 km138 hectares29 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Copenhagen leads by 39 points.39
CopenhagenLucerne
Score7435
Notable places within 2 km27329
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Copenhagen leads by 17 points.17
CopenhagenLucerne
Score5235
Price level global87.8110.5
Daily budget€214€248
Year-round weather. Copenhagen leads by 2 points.2
CopenhagenLucerne
Score5553
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 22.7 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall28 mm to 74 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months30
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
Copenhagen
4
4
7
12
17
20
23
22
18
13
8
5
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Copenhagen
3
2
3
6
10
14
17
18
15
12
9
5
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Copenhagen
44
32
30
28
47
60
59
74
59
61
49
47
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Copenhagen
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
8
7
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Copenhagen
No sunshine record
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
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). Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCopenhagenLucerne
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 50 m
€55-95
CPH · 8 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€167-221
CPH · 8 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 20 m
€90-98
1 stop
CPH · 8 km
2 h 25 m
€207-228
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
OsloOSL, TRF
1 h 15 m
no fares
CPH · 8 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€195-237
CPH · 8 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 49 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 50 m
€70-135
CPH · 8 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
BerlinBER
1 h 5 m
€62-71
CPH · 8 km
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 55 m
€460-501
1 stop
CPH · 8 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 20 m
€338-366
1 stop
CPH · 8 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
10 h 50 m
no fares
CPH · 8 km
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 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

MeasureCopenhagenLucerne
Official languageDanishFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyDanish Krone (DKK)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCEFK230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation14 m436 m
Main airportCopenhagen Kastrup Airport (CPH)8 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureCopenhagenLucerne
City population667,09986,234
People per km²7,3392,963
Museums within 10 km7214
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km51
Distinct cuisines in the centre8246
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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