VacationSelector

Heidelberg or Portland?

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

Your match

Heidelberg
✓ Best match
45
match

Wins on nature & day trips and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Portland
42
match

Wins on nightlife 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.

Scoreboard

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

HeidelbergPortland
Beaches & swimming. Heidelberg and Portland are level on 0.
HeidelbergPortland
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km627
Coast distance406 km69 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Portland leads by 27 points.27
HeidelbergPortland
Score4774
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2691,011
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2644
Museums & heritage. Heidelberg leads by 24 points.24
HeidelbergPortland
Score5935
Museums within 10 km5423
Museums within 2 km of centre2315
Share of museums within 2 km %4365
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. Portland leads by 31 points.31
HeidelbergPortland
Score2758
Drinking venues within 4 km201942
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre169518
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8455
Nightclubs within 4 km832
Nature & day trips. Heidelberg leads by 39 points.39
HeidelbergPortland
Score7435
Protected land share 50 km %5213
Landscape blanket share 50 km %223
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km20 hectares37 hectares
Good for families. Heidelberg leads by 9 points.9
HeidelbergPortland
Score4334
Tourist attractions within 2 km298
Park area within 2 km20 hectares37 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Heidelberg leads by 1 points.1
HeidelbergPortland
Score3635
Notable places within 2 km3129
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Heidelberg leads by 17 points.17
HeidelbergPortland
Score6043
Price level global75.9100
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Portland leads by 4 points.4
HeidelbergPortland
Score6165
Monthly daytime high5.2 °C to 25.8 °C7.9 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall45 mm to 80 mm13 mm to 145 mm
Dry months03
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
Heidelberg
5
7
12
17
21
24
26
26
21
15
9
6
Portland
8
11
13
16
20
23
27
28
25
18
12
8
Rainfall, mm
Heidelberg
46
46
53
45
69
66
80
67
56
61
62
64
Portland
128
94
101
75
65
41
13
14
39
87
138
145
Daylight, hours per day
Heidelberg
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Portland
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Heidelberg
2
3
4
6
7
7
8
7
6
4
2
1
Portland
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Heidelberg: 1991-2020 normals, Heidelberg (4.5 km from centre). Portland: 1991-2020 normals, Portland International Airport (9.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHeidelbergPortland
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 55 m
€537-713
FRA · 69 km
5 h 20 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 40 m
no fares
FRA · 69 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
8 h 50 m
no fares
FRA · 69 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 25 m
€74-124
FRA · 69 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
San FranciscoSFO
11 h 25 m
€628-763
1 stop
FRA · 69 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
10 h 20 m
no fares
FRA · 69 km
55 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
DenverDEN, APA
10 h 10 m
no fares
FRA · 69 km
2 h 30 m
€167-182
PDX · 10 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
8 h 20 m
€656-803
2 stops
FRA · 69 km
5 h 5 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
10 h 25 m
no fares
FRA · 69 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
Las VegasLAS
11 h 15 m
no fares
FRA · 69 km
2 h 5 m
€173-370
PDX · 10 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 2026-09 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

MeasureHeidelbergPortland
Official languageGerman
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation114 m152 m
Main airportFrankfurt Main Airport (FRA)69 km from centre293 non-stop destinationsPortland International Airport (PDX)10 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureHeidelbergPortland
City population162,960652,503
People per km²1,4961,736
Museums within 10 km1717
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre4582

Where else could you go?

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