VacationSelector

Faro or Lucerne?

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

Your match

Faro
✓ Best match
47
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Lucerne
33
match

Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration 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.

FaroLucerne
Beaches & swimming. Faro leads by 61 points.61
FaroLucerne
Score610
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km1316
Coast distance0 km669 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Lucerne leads by 3 points.3
FaroLucerne
Score4447
Restaurants within 2 km of centre255269
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2225
Museums & heritage. Lucerne leads by 18 points.18
FaroLucerne
Score2240
Museums within 10 km923
Museums within 2 km of centre813
Share of museums within 2 km %8957
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Lucerne leads by 7 points.7
FaroLucerne
Score2128
Drinking venues within 4 km143202
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre123151
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8675
Nightclubs within 4 km811
Nature & day trips. Faro leads by 32 points.32
FaroLucerne
Score5725
Protected land share 50 km %117
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %42100
Park area within 2 km34 hectares29 hectares
Good for families. Lucerne leads by 2 points.2
FaroLucerne
Score3638
Tourist attractions within 2 km1015
Park area within 2 km34 hectares29 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Lucerne leads by 13 points.13
FaroLucerne
Score2235
Notable places within 2 km1429
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Faro leads by 39 points.39
FaroLucerne
Score7435
Price level global55.9110.5
Daily budget€109€248
Year-round weather. Faro leads by 30 points.30
FaroLucerne
Score8353
Monthly daytime high16.3 °C to 29 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall1 mm to 102 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months60
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
Faro
16
17
19
21
24
27
29
29
26
23
19
17
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Faro
17
16
16
17
18
20
21
22
21
21
19
17
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Faro
55
39
44
40
23
6
1
5
28
57
75
102
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Faro
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Faro
6
6
8
9
10
12
12
11
9
8
6
6
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. Faro: 1991-2020 normals, Faro / Aeroporto (2.8 km from centre). Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromFaroLucerne
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
DublinDUB
2 h 50 m
€75-114
FAO · 3 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 0 m
€144-189
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 30 m
€126-204
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
LisbonLIS
55 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
2 h 40 m
€188-233
ZRH · 49 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 50 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
PortoOPO
1 h 15 m
€37-132
FAO · 3 km
2 h 30 m
€139-206
ZRH · 49 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
3 h 0 m
€137-201
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 15 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 20 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
BSL · 85 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 2026-09 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

MeasureFaroLucerne
Official languagePortugueseFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation10 m436 m
Main airportFaro - Gago Coutinho International Airport (FAO)3 km from centre91 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureFaroLucerne
City population64,56086,234
People per km²3192,963
Museums within 10 km214
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre3446
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

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