VacationSelector

Dresden or Zurich?

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.

Zurich
44
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat 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.

DresdenZurich
Beaches & swimming. Dresden and Zurich are level on 0.
DresdenZurich
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km2223
Coast distance267 km632 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Zurich leads by 6 points.6
DresdenZurich
Score6167
Restaurants within 2 km of centre422974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4230
Museums & heritage. Zurich leads by 2 points.2
DresdenZurich
Score5456
Museums within 10 km6676
Museums within 2 km of centre3437
Share of museums within 2 km %5249
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Zurich leads by 12 points.12
DresdenZurich
Score4254
Drinking venues within 4 km359676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre265553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7482
Nightclubs within 4 km4374
Nature & day trips. Dresden leads by 2 points.2
DresdenZurich
Score3937
Protected land share 50 km %1416
Landscape blanket share 50 km %99
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km80 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Dresden leads by 23 points.23
DresdenZurich
Score5936
Tourist attractions within 2 km328
Park area within 2 km80 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Zurich leads by 6 points.6
DresdenZurich
Score5359
Notable places within 2 km82119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dresden leads by 25 points.25
DresdenZurich
Score6035
Price level global75.9110.5
Daily budget€163€248
Year-round weather. Dresden leads by 9 points.9
DresdenZurich
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
Zurich
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
Zurich
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
Zurich
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
Zurich
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). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

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

MeasureDresdenZurich
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 m408 m
Main airportDresden Airport (DRS)10 km from centre12 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureDresdenZurich
City population564,904452,421
People per km²1,7205,147
Museums within 10 km7063
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre7778

Where else could you go?

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