VacationSelector

Dresden or Lucerne?

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

Your match

Dresden
✓ Best match
48
match

Wins on value for money and good for families 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.

DresdenLucerne
Beaches & swimming. Dresden and Lucerne are level on 0.
DresdenLucerne
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km2216
Coast distance267 km669 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Dresden leads by 14 points.14
DresdenLucerne
Score6147
Restaurants within 2 km of centre422269
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4225
Museums & heritage. Dresden leads by 14 points.14
DresdenLucerne
Score5440
Museums within 10 km6623
Museums within 2 km of centre3413
Share of museums within 2 km %5257
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Dresden leads by 14 points.14
DresdenLucerne
Score4228
Drinking venues within 4 km359202
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre265151
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7475
Nightclubs within 4 km4311
Nature & day trips. Dresden leads by 14 points.14
DresdenLucerne
Score3925
Protected land share 50 km %147
Landscape blanket share 50 km %90
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km80 hectares29 hectares
Good for families. Dresden leads by 21 points.21
DresdenLucerne
Score5938
Tourist attractions within 2 km3215
Park area within 2 km80 hectares29 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Dresden leads by 18 points.18
DresdenLucerne
Score5335
Notable places within 2 km8229
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dresden leads by 25 points.25
DresdenLucerne
Score6035
Price level global75.9110.5
Daily budget€163€248
Year-round weather. Dresden leads by 9 points.9
DresdenLucerne
Score6253
Monthly daytime high4 °C to 26.2 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall31 mm to 83 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months40
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
Dresden
4
6
10
17
21
24
26
26
21
15
9
6
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Rainfall, mm
Dresden
46
31
36
36
64
72
80
83
55
49
40
45
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Dresden
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Dresden
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
7
6
4
2
2
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. Dresden: 1991-2020 normals, Dresden-Strehlen (3.8 km from centre). Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDresdenLucerne
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
€163-247
PRG · 112 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€86-113
PRG · 112 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€118-136
PRG · 112 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 49 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 45 m
€62-97
PRG · 112 km
1 h 30 m
€70-92
ZRH · 49 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 15 m
€111-155
PRG · 112 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 49 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 40 m
no fares
LEJ · 113 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€737
BER · 147 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 55 m
€276-321
1 stop
PRG · 112 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
10 h 45 m
no fares
PRG · 112 km
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
Punta CanaPUJ
10 h 0 m
no fares
PRG · 112 km
9 h 30 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

MeasureDresdenLucerne
Official languageGermanFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation126 m436 m
Main airportDresden Airport (DRS)10 km from centre12 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureDresdenLucerne
City population564,90486,234
People per km²1,7202,963
Museums within 10 km7014
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre7746

Where else could you go?

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