VacationSelector

Hamburg or Zurich?

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

Your match

Hamburg
✓ Best match
53
match

Wins on value for money and good for families with your weighting.

Zurich
44
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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.

HamburgZurich
Beaches & swimming. Hamburg and Zurich are level on 0.
HamburgZurich
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1623
Coast distance22 km632 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Hamburg leads by 6 points.6
HamburgZurich
Score7367
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,150974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3830
Museums & heritage. Hamburg leads by 4 points.4
HamburgZurich
Score6056
Museums within 10 km9476
Museums within 2 km of centre5037
Share of museums within 2 km %5349
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Hamburg leads by 14 points.14
HamburgZurich
Score6854
Drinking venues within 4 km1,339676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre834553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6282
Nightclubs within 4 km11974
Nature & day trips. Hamburg leads by 3 points.3
HamburgZurich
Score4037
Protected land share 50 km %1416
Landscape blanket share 50 km %109
Land share of disc %99100
Park area within 2 km89 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Hamburg leads by 24 points.24
HamburgZurich
Score6036
Tourist attractions within 2 km408
Park area within 2 km89 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Hamburg and Zurich are level on 59.
HamburgZurich
Score5959
Notable places within 2 km118119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Hamburg leads by 25 points.25
HamburgZurich
Score6035
Price level global75.9110.5
Daily budget€163€248
Year-round weather. Hamburg leads by 2 points.2
HamburgZurich
Score5553
Monthly daytime high4.3 °C to 23.2 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall39 mm to 82 mm60 mm to 128 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
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Rainfall, mm
Hamburg
67
55
57
39
58
74
82
77
65
63
61
72
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Hamburg
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Hamburg
1
2
4
6
7
7
7
7
5
4
2
1
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. Hamburg: 1991-2020 normals, Hamburg Airport (9.3 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHamburgZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€89-225
HAM · 9 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
MunichMUC
1 h 20 m
€195-270
HAM · 9 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 10 m
no fares
HAM · 9 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 35 m
no fares
HAM · 9 km
1 h 50 m
€84-103
ZRH · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€178-237
HAM · 9 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 9 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€167-214
1 stop
HAM · 9 km
1 h 25 m
€174-215
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€357-416
HAM · 9 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 5 m
€337-378
1 stop
HAM · 9 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 35 m
€162-200
HAM · 9 km
3 h 15 m
€154-180
ZRH · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 25 m
€127-153
HAM · 9 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
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

MeasureHamburgZurich
Official languageGermanFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation6 m408 m
Main airportHamburg Helmut Schmidt Airport (HAM)9 km from centre119 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureHamburgZurich
City population1,910,160452,421
People per km²2,5305,147
Museums within 10 km7763
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8378

Where else could you go?

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