VacationSelector

Geneva or Lyon?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Geneva
50
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families with your weighting.

Lyon
52
match

Wins on value for money 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.

The verdict

Choose Geneva if the point of the trip is what lies outside it: protected countryside within easy reach, generous park space near the centre, and a walkable core with a little more packed into it.

Choose Lyon if you would rather spend your days eating, drinking and in museums, want a warmer September, and find it useful that France's national price estimate is the lower of the two, at €160 a day.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

GenevaLyon
Beaches & swimming. Geneva and Lyon are level on 0.
GenevaLyon
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km4326
Coast distance279 km253 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Lyon leads by 9 points.9
GenevaLyon
Score7079
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0281,691
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3540
Museums & heritage. Lyon leads by 3 points.3
GenevaLyon
Score5255
Museums within 10 km3553
Museums within 2 km of centre2025
Share of museums within 2 km %5747
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Lyon leads by 8 points.8
GenevaLyon
Score5058
Drinking venues within 4 km549866
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre427611
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7871
Nightclubs within 4 km6047
Nature & day trips. Geneva leads by 26 points.26
GenevaLyon
Score5933
Protected land share 50 km %276
Landscape blanket share 50 km %216
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km182 hectares120 hectares
Good for families. Geneva leads by 6 points.6
GenevaLyon
Score6559
Tourist attractions within 2 km2825
Park area within 2 km182 hectares120 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Geneva leads by 2 points.2
GenevaLyon
Score5654
Notable places within 2 km9986
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lyon leads by 27 points.27
GenevaLyon
Score3562
Price level global110.573.7
Daily budget€248€160
Year-round weather. Lyon leads by 5 points.5
GenevaLyon
Score5964
Monthly daytime high5.1 °C to 26.8 °C7 °C to 28 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 94 mm43 mm to 101 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Geneva is the better base for days out of the city: 27% of the land around it is protected against 6% around Lyon, and it has about twice as much park space near the centre, along with slightly more notable places within walking distance.

Lyon has about twice as many restaurants near the centre, though the range of kitchens is similar in both. The daily estimate is €160 in France against €248 in Switzerland, national figures rather than measurements of either city.

Where they are alike

Neither city is a swimming destination. Geneva has 43 beaches nearby and Lyon 26, but neither gets a month of water at 21°C or more, so a swim is a warm-day extra rather than a reason to go.

They are close elsewhere too: both have 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, both keep most notable sights within walking distance of the centre, and neither has a month at 40mm of rain or less.

Which traveller are you?

If you plan your days around meals, Lyon: about twice as many restaurants near the centre and twice as many places to drink, most of them close in, though the range of kitchens is similar in both.

Travelling with children, Geneva has about twice as much park space near the centre and a comparable set of attractions, and both cities have 2 theme parks within reach.

For walking and days out, Geneva again: 27% of the land around it is protected against 6% around Lyon, and slightly more notable places sit within walking distance of its centre.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily figures, €248 for Switzerland and €160 for France, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of Geneva or Lyon. A heavily visited city can sit well away from its country's average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so treat them as background rather than as a cost comparison between these two.

The months that favour both cities are not dry ones: neither has a month at 40mm of rain or less, and Geneva's warmest months carry 77-81mm, so plan for indoor time even in July.

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
Geneva
5
7
12
16
20
24
27
26
21
16
9
6
Lyon
7
9
14
17
21
26
28
28
23
18
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Geneva
71
55
61
66
77
81
77
80
87
94
87
88
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Daylight, hours per day
Geneva
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Lyon
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Geneva
2
3
6
6
7
8
9
8
6
4
2
2
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
6
4
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Geneva: 1991-2020 normals, Geneve-Cointrin (5.7 km from centre). Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Geneva is at its best from June to August, when highs run 24-27°C and rainfall sits at 77-81mm. August, at 26°C, is the gentler end if Lyon's 28°C sounds like too much. October is the month to skip, at 94mm.

Lyon holds the season longer at both ends: September still reaches 23°C against Geneva's 21°C, and its winters are drier, with 43mm in February against 55mm. Its own wet point is October, at 101mm.

Getting there

Flying fromGenevaLyon
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€91-200
GVA · 5 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€104-203
GVA · 5 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
PortoOPO
2 h 10 m
€127-171
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 55 m
€147-338
GVA · 5 km
3 h 0 m
€167-217
LYS · 20 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 25 m
€156-181
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
2 h 20 m
€109-165
LYS · 20 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
€160-186
GVA · 5 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 25 m
€65-78
GVA · 5 km
1 h 20 m
€70-92
LYS · 20 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€318-351
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
6 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 35 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
7 h 35 m
€446-565
1 stop
LYS · 20 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 111 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

MeasureGenevaLyon
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshFrench
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation403 m160 m
Main airportGeneva International Airport (GVA)5 km from centre140 non-stop destinationsLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureGenevaLyon
City population209,061519,127
People per km²13,14810,838
Museums within 10 km3542
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre80148

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Geneva or Lyon 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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). 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. 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.