VacationSelector

Dresden or Gdansk?

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

Your match

Dresden
48
match

Wins on year-round weather and places to eat with your weighting.

Gdansk
✓ Best match
56
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.

The verdict

Choose Dresden if the trip is about the city itself: warmer days through the year, up to 26°C in July, about twice as many museums as Gdansk and a wider spread of kitchens to eat from.

Choose Gdansk if you are travelling with children or want the coast, with attractions clustered near the centre, more theme parks within reach and sea at 19°C in August.

Scoreboard

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

DresdenGdansk
Beaches & swimming. Gdansk leads by 55 points.55
DresdenGdansk
Score055
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km2220
Coast distance267 km1 km
Water distance—1 km
Places to eat. Dresden leads by 9 points.9
DresdenGdansk
Score6152
Restaurants within 2 km of centre422348
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4228
Museums & heritage. Gdansk leads by 3 points.3
DresdenGdansk
Score5457
Museums within 10 km6643
Museums within 2 km of centre3428
Share of museums within 2 km %5265
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Dresden leads by 6 points.6
DresdenGdansk
Score4236
Drinking venues within 4 km359269
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre265203
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7475
Nightclubs within 4 km4330
Nature & day trips. Gdansk leads by 6 points.6
DresdenGdansk
Score3945
Protected land share 50 km %1412
Landscape blanket share 50 km %93
Land share of disc %10070
Park area within 2 km80 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Gdansk leads by 16 points.16
DresdenGdansk
Score5975
Tourist attractions within 2 km32108
Park area within 2 km80 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km23
Sights concentration. Dresden leads by 1 points.1
DresdenGdansk
Score5352
Notable places within 2 km8276
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Gdansk leads by 19 points.19
DresdenGdansk
Score6079
Price level global75.949
Daily budget€163€133
Year-round weather. Dresden leads by 10 points.10
DresdenGdansk
Score6252
Monthly daytime high4 °C to 26.2 °C0.7 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall31 mm to 83 mm37 mm to 87 mm
Dry months43
0255075100

Where they differ

Dresden's advantages here are narrow ones. It has more park space near the centre, and 22 beaches nearby against Gdansk's 20, though none of them coastal, since the data gives Dresden no sea temperature at all.

Gdansk suits families better, with about three times as many tourist attractions near the centre and 3 theme parks within reach against Dresden's 2, plus a swimmable Baltic coast. The daily budget estimate is €133 for Poland and €163 for Germany, national figures rather than city ones.

Where they are alike

Sights concentration is where they are nearest: each puts about the same number of notable places within walking distance of its centre, so both work as a walk-out-of-the-hotel city break.

The other near-matches are heritage, nightlife and countryside. Both keep their museums and their drinking places close to the centre, and both have UNESCO-listed sites within day-trip reach, 2 from Gdansk and 1 from Dresden. Protected land is similar too, 14% around Dresden against 12% around Gdansk.

Which traveller are you?

Travelling with children: Gdansk. Attractions cluster near the centre, there are 3 theme parks within reach against Dresden's 2, and the Baltic gives a beach day in high summer, which Dresden cannot offer.

Here to eat and look at things: Dresden. More restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens, plus far more museums, though Gdansk's own sit more tightly around its core.

Out after dark, or out of town: Dresden again, marginally. It has somewhat more bars and clubs, most of them central, and slightly more protected countryside and central park space for days spent walking.

What the numbers don't tell you

Gdansk's coast is a short season. The sea only reaches 19°C at its August peak, and both cities' strongest summer months are also their wettest, 80-87mm in July and August, so warm and dry are not the same month here. Dresden has no sea temperature in the data at all, so its swimming is not coastal.

The daily budget is a national estimate for Germany and Poland, the price level for restaurants and hotels, not a measurement of either city. A heavily visited city can sit far from its country's average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so it cannot tell you which city costs more.

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
Dresden
4
6
10
17
21
24
26
26
21
15
9
6
Gdansk
1
2
6
12
17
20
22
22
18
12
7
3
Sea temperature, °C
Dresden
No coastline within reach
Gdansk
4
3
3
5
10
14
18
19
17
13
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Dresden
46
31
36
36
64
72
80
83
55
49
40
45
Gdansk
47
37
40
37
59
68
87
78
74
71
54
55
Daylight, hours per day
Dresden
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Gdansk
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Dresden
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
7
6
4
2
2
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. Dresden: 1991-2020 normals, Dresden-Strehlen (3.8 km from centre). Gdansk: 1991-2020 normals, Gdansk-Rebiechowo (12.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Dresden's season starts earlier. April already reaches 17°C with 36mm of rain, and May 21°C with 64mm, so late spring gives warmth without the peak-summer rain. September holds 21°C on 55mm, and October 15°C.

Gdansk lags by a few weeks: April is 12°C and May 17°C, and the sea is not warm enough for swimming until July. September stays mild at 18°C, but with 74mm of rain and 71mm in October, autumn is the wetter half.

Getting there

Flying fromDresdenGdansk
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
€163-247
PRG · 112 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 25 m
€66-91
PRG · 112 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
OsloOSL, TRF
2 h 0 m
€141-201
1 stop
PRG · 112 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€86-113
PRG · 112 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 40 m
no fares
LEJ · 113 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 25 m
€57-79
PRG · 112 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
1 h 15 m
€138-160
1 stop
PRG · 112 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 55 m
€91-151
PRG · 112 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 45 m
€62-97
PRG · 112 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
HurghadaHRG
4 h 20 m
no fares
DRS · 10 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

MeasureDresdenGdansk
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
Elevation126 m11 m
Main airportDresden Airport (DRS)10 km from centre12 non-stop destinationsGdańsk Lech Wałęsa Airport (GDN)13 km from centre65 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureDresdenGdansk
City population564,904487,834
People per km²1,720714
Museums within 10 km7037
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre7748
Swim season, months above 21 °C–None

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Dresden 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. 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. 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.