VacationSelector

Galway or Zurich?

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

Your match

Galway
39
match

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

Zurich
✓ Best match
44
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage 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.

GalwayZurich
Beaches & swimming. Galway leads by 51 points.51
GalwayZurich
Score510
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1323
Coast distance1 km632 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Zurich leads by 30 points.30
GalwayZurich
Score3767
Restaurants within 2 km of centre173974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2030
Museums & heritage. Zurich leads by 36 points.36
GalwayZurich
Score2056
Museums within 10 km576
Museums within 2 km of centre537
Share of museums within 2 km %10049
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Zurich leads by 28 points.28
GalwayZurich
Score2654
Drinking venues within 4 km185676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre153553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8382
Nightclubs within 4 km874
Nature & day trips. Galway leads by 18 points.18
GalwayZurich
Score5537
Protected land share 50 km %16
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %85100
Park area within 2 km65 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Zurich leads by 11 points.11
GalwayZurich
Score2536
Tourist attractions within 2 km58
Park area within 2 km65 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Zurich leads by 37 points.37
GalwayZurich
Score2259
Notable places within 2 km14119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Galway leads by 22 points.22
GalwayZurich
Score5735
Price level global80.2110.5
Daily budget€187€248
Year-round weather. Galway leads by 1 points.1
GalwayZurich
Score5453
Monthly daytime high8.9 °C to 19.6 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall63 mm to 113 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
Galway
9
10
11
14
16
19
20
19
18
14
11
9
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Galway
9
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
15
14
12
10
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Galway
100
87
76
63
63
72
76
89
77
101
104
113
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Galway
8
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
Galway
2
2
4
5
6
5
4
5
4
3
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. Galway: 1991-2020 normals, Shannon Airport (64.2 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGalwayZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
1 h 50 m
€84-103
ZRH · 9 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
BostonBOS, PSM
6 h 10 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 10 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
MadridMAD
2 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 10 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
1 h 50 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

MeasureGalwayZurich
Official languageEnglish, IrishFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation25 m408 m
Main airportShannon Airport (SNN)64 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureGalwayZurich
City population83,456452,421
People per km²1,5635,147
Museums within 10 km463
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre2578
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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