VacationSelector

Hamburg or Philadelphia?

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

Hamburg
53
match

Wins on value for money and nightlife with your weighting.

Philadelphia
51
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.

HamburgPhiladelphia
Beaches & swimming. Hamburg and Philadelphia are level on 0.
HamburgPhiladelphia
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km161
Coast distance22 km13 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Philadelphia leads by 4 points.4
HamburgPhiladelphia
Score7377
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1501,714
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3835
Museums & heritage. Hamburg and Philadelphia are level on 60.
HamburgPhiladelphia
Score6060
Museums within 10 km9489
Museums within 2 km of centre5048
Share of museums within 2 km %5354
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Hamburg leads by 9 points.9
HamburgPhiladelphia
Score6859
Drinking venues within 4 km1,339930
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre834575
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6262
Nightclubs within 4 km11941
Nature & day trips. Philadelphia leads by 9 points.9
HamburgPhiladelphia
Score4049
Protected land share 50 km %1414
Landscape blanket share 50 km %100
Land share of disc %9989
Park area within 2 km89 hectares75 hectares
Good for families. Hamburg leads by 7 points.7
HamburgPhiladelphia
Score6053
Tourist attractions within 2 km4016
Park area within 2 km89 hectares75 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km14
Sights concentration. Hamburg leads by 5 points.5
HamburgPhiladelphia
Score5954
Notable places within 2 km11888
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Hamburg leads by 17 points.17
HamburgPhiladelphia
Score6043
Price level global75.9100
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Philadelphia leads by 5 points.5
HamburgPhiladelphia
Score5560
Monthly daytime high4.3 °C to 23.2 °C5.2 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall39 mm to 82 mm69 mm to 112 mm
Dry months10
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
Hamburg
4
5
9
14
18
21
23
23
19
14
8
5
Philadelphia
5
7
12
18
24
28
31
30
26
20
13
8
Rainfall, mm
Hamburg
67
55
57
39
58
74
82
77
65
63
61
72
Philadelphia
79
69
101
88
86
103
111
109
112
88
74
101
Daylight, hours per day
Hamburg
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Philadelphia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Hamburg
1
2
4
6
7
7
7
7
5
4
2
1
Philadelphia
4
5
6
7
9
9
8
9
7
7
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Hamburg: 1991-2020 normals, Hamburg Airport (9.3 km from centre). Philadelphia: 1991-2020 normals, Philadelphia International Airport (11.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHamburgPhiladelphia
MunichMUC
1 h 20 m
€195-270
HAM · 9 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€89-225
HAM · 9 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 10 m
no fares
HAM · 9 km
8 h 5 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 35 m
no fares
HAM · 9 km
8 h 5 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€178-237
HAM · 9 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 30 m
€216-237
1 stop
HAM · 9 km
8 h 15 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€167-214
1 stop
HAM · 9 km
8 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€357-416
HAM · 9 km
13 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
DublinDUB
1 h 55 m
no fares
HAM · 9 km
6 h 50 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€155-168
1 stop
HAM · 9 km
7 h 40 m
no fares
PHL · 11 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

MeasureHamburgPhiladelphia
Official languageGerman
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation6 m12 m
Main airportHamburg Helmut Schmidt Airport (HAM)9 km from centre119 non-stop destinationsPhiladelphia International Airport (PHL)11 km from centre128 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureHamburgPhiladelphia
City population1,910,1601,603,797
People per km²2,5304,339
Museums within 10 km7754
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8375

Where else could you go?

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