VacationSelector

Geneva or Strasbourg?

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

Your match

Geneva
✓ Best match
50
match

Wins on good for families and nightlife with your weighting.

Strasbourg
47
match

Wins on value for money 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.

The verdict

Choose Geneva if you want the wider set of things to do without planning far ahead: more museums, more attractions and parks near the centre, 2 theme parks within reach, and more places to drink after dark.

Choose Strasbourg if you want drier winters and early spring, a compact centre where the museums sit close together, and more protected countryside within day-trip range.

Scoreboard

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

GenevaStrasbourg
Beaches & swimming. Geneva and Strasbourg are level on 0.
GenevaStrasbourg
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km439
Coast distance279 km398 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Geneva leads by 3 points.3
GenevaStrasbourg
Score7067
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,028780
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3536
Museums & heritage. Geneva leads by 11 points.11
GenevaStrasbourg
Score5241
Museums within 10 km3523
Museums within 2 km of centre2014
Share of museums within 2 km %5761
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Geneva leads by 14 points.14
GenevaStrasbourg
Score5036
Drinking venues within 4 km549305
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre427264
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7887
Nightclubs within 4 km6017
Nature & day trips. Geneva leads by 5 points.5
GenevaStrasbourg
Score5954
Protected land share 50 km %2737
Landscape blanket share 50 km %2135
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km182 hectares71 hectares
Good for families. Geneva leads by 27 points.27
GenevaStrasbourg
Score6538
Tourist attractions within 2 km289
Park area within 2 km182 hectares71 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Strasbourg leads by 2 points.2
GenevaStrasbourg
Score5658
Notable places within 2 km99109
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Strasbourg leads by 27 points.27
GenevaStrasbourg
Score3562
Price level global110.573.7
Daily budget€248€160
Year-round weather. Strasbourg leads by 4 points.4
GenevaStrasbourg
Score5963
Monthly daytime high5.1 °C to 26.8 °C5.2 °C to 26.4 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 94 mm34 mm to 77 mm
Dry months03
0255075100

Where they differ

Geneva has about twice as many museums as Strasbourg and 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 1. Families get about three times as many attractions and as much park space near the centre, plus 2 theme parks within reach against 1. Nights out are wider too: roughly three times as many nightclubs, most of them central.

Strasbourg's countryside is better protected, 37% of the surrounding land against 27%, and its museums sit tightly around the centre. France's national daily budget estimate, €160, sits well below Switzerland's €248.

Where they are alike

Neither is a swimming destination. Geneva counts 43 beaches nearby and Strasbourg 9, but neither has a month with water at 21°C or more, so swimming is incidental rather than a reason to go.

Both put a similar number of notable places within walking distance of the centre. The choice of kitchens is comparable, with Geneva a little denser in restaurants near the centre, and daytime highs run about 5-27°C in both across the year.

Which traveller are you?

Travelling with children: Geneva. It has about three times as many tourist attractions and as much park space near the centre, and 2 theme parks within reach against Strasbourg's 1, so wet days keep indoor and outdoor fallbacks.

Out late and eating around: Geneva again. It has roughly three times as many nightclubs and more places to drink, most of them central, and somewhat more restaurants near the centre, though the range of kitchens is similar in both.

Walking and countryside: Strasbourg. Protected land makes up 37% of its surroundings against 27% around Geneva, the notable places sit as close to the centre, and April and September stay drier for long days outside.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures are national, one per country: an estimate of restaurant and hotel price levels in Switzerland and in France, not a measurement of Geneva or Strasbourg. A heavily visited city can sit a long way from its own country's average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so treat it as background rather than a verdict on either.

The 43 beaches counted near Geneva also mislead. Neither city has a month with water at 21°C or more, so these are short-season lake swims, not a beach holiday.

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
Strasbourg
5
7
12
17
21
24
26
26
22
16
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Geneva
71
55
61
66
77
81
77
80
87
94
87
88
Strasbourg
35
34
39
42
77
68
72
61
55
59
47
45
Daylight, hours per day
Geneva
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Strasbourg
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Geneva
2
3
6
6
7
8
9
8
6
4
2
2
Strasbourg
2
3
5
6
7
7
8
7
6
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Geneva: 1991-2020 normals, Geneve-Cointrin (5.7 km from centre). Strasbourg: 1991-2020 normals, Strasbourg (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Geneva is at its best from June to August, with highs of 24-27°C. Rain does not step aside for the season, though: those months run 77-81mm, and September and October are wetter still, at 87-94mm.

Strasbourg matches the summer heat at 24-26°C and holds up better either side of it: April reaches 17°C on 42mm, September 22°C on 55mm. Its winter and early spring are the drier stretch, at 34-39mm, where Geneva has no month that dry.

Getting there

Flying fromGenevaStrasbourg
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€91-200
GVA · 5 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SXB · 10 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 35 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
FKB · 33 km
NiceNCE
1 h 0 m
€64-114
GVA · 5 km
1 h 20 m
€81-198
SXB · 10 km
PortoOPO
2 h 10 m
€127-171
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
SXB · 10 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
SXB · 10 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 25 m
€65-78
GVA · 5 km
1 h 45 m
€133-212
1 stop
SXB · 10 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 25 m
€156-181
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
STR · 109 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€104-203
GVA · 5 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
STR · 109 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€318-351
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 137 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 137 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

MeasureGenevaStrasbourg
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 m132 m
Main airportGeneva International Airport (GVA)5 km from centre140 non-stop destinationsStrasbourg Airport (SXB)10 km from centre42 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureGenevaStrasbourg
City population209,061293,771
People per km²13,1483,752
Museums within 10 km3521
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre8087

Where else could you go?

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