VacationSelector

Edinburgh or Zurich?

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

Your match

Edinburgh
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Zurich
44
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather 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.

EdinburghZurich
Beaches & swimming. Edinburgh leads by 55 points.55
EdinburghZurich
Score550
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km2023
Coast distance3 km632 km
Water distance3 km
Places to eat. Edinburgh leads by 3 points.3
EdinburghZurich
Score7067
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,023974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3530
Museums & heritage. Edinburgh leads by 1 points.1
EdinburghZurich
Score5756
Museums within 10 km3076
Museums within 2 km of centre2237
Share of museums within 2 km %7349
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Edinburgh leads by 10 points.10
EdinburghZurich
Score6454
Drinking venues within 4 km1,193676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre884553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7482
Nightclubs within 4 km6574
Nature & day trips. Zurich leads by 2 points.2
EdinburghZurich
Score3537
Protected land share 50 km %216
Landscape blanket share 50 km %19
Land share of disc %85100
Park area within 2 km166 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 36 points.36
EdinburghZurich
Score7236
Tourist attractions within 2 km878
Park area within 2 km166 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Edinburgh leads by 1 points.1
EdinburghZurich
Score6059
Notable places within 2 km126119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Edinburgh leads by 19 points.19
EdinburghZurich
Score5435
Price level global84.9110.5
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. Zurich leads by 2 points.2
EdinburghZurich
Score5153
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.8 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 80 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months00
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
Edinburgh
7
7
9
12
14
17
19
19
17
13
9
7
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Edinburgh
2
3
4
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
3
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. Edinburgh: 1991-2020 normals, Edinburgh Airport (10 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromEdinburghZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
€41-45
EDI · 11 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 50 m
€84-103
ZRH · 9 km
MadridMAD
2 h 40 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€78-108
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 35 m
€150-240
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
1 h 25 m
€174-215
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 40 m
€58-103
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 50 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
BerlinBER
2 h 0 m
€141-162
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 30 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
CancunCUN
9 h 40 m
no fares
GLA · 78 km
10 h 55 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

MeasureEdinburghZurich
Official languageEnglishFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation47 m408 m
Main airportEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureEdinburghZurich
City population488,050452,421
People per km²1,8845,147
Museums within 10 km3263
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre7878
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Edinburgh 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.