VacationSelector

Interlaken or Munich?

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

Your match

Interlaken
23
match

Wins on year-round weather with your weighting.

Munich
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on good for families and nightlife 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 Interlaken if the trip is built around the outdoors: 12 beaches nearby, a slightly larger share of protected land around it, and the drier summer of the two, with three months at 40mm of rain or less.

Choose Munich if you want a city trip: far more restaurants, museums, bars and clubs, much more to see on foot near the centre, and theme parks and green space for children.

Scoreboard

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

InterlakenMunich
Beaches & swimming. Interlaken and Munich are level on 0.
InterlakenMunich
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km126
Coast distance713 km579 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Munich leads by 44 points.44
InterlakenMunich
Score2973
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1181,280
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1735
Museums & heritage. Munich leads by 38 points.38
InterlakenMunich
Score2361
Museums within 10 km574
Museums within 2 km of centre248
Share of museums within 2 km %4065
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Munich leads by 63 points.63
InterlakenMunich
Score467
Drinking venues within 4 km421,335
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre38763
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %9057
Nightclubs within 4 km3103
Nature & day trips. Munich leads by 21 points.21
InterlakenMunich
Score2748
Protected land share 50 km %1917
Landscape blanket share 50 km %015
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km5 hectares199 hectares
Good for families. Munich leads by 65 points.65
InterlakenMunich
Score1479
Tourist attractions within 2 km1180
Park area within 2 km5 hectares199 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Munich leads by 46 points.46
InterlakenMunich
Score2268
Notable places within 2 km14196
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Munich leads by 25 points.25
InterlakenMunich
Score3560
Price level global110.575.9
Daily budget€248€163
Year-round weather. Interlaken leads by 1 points.1
InterlakenMunich
Score5756
Monthly daytime high2.8 °C to 23.6 °C4 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 68 mm46 mm to 121 mm
Dry months30
0255075100

Where they differ

Interlaken sits closer to open country: 19% of the land around it is protected against 17% around Munich, there are 12 beaches nearby against 6, and 2 UNESCO-listed places lie within day-trip reach against Munich's 1.

Munich is the stronger city break: many times as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens, many times as many museums, bars and clubs, and far more notable places within walking distance. It also has 2 theme parks within reach, where Interlaken has none.

Where they are alike

Neither is a sea destination. Both sit inland, neither has a month of sea at 21°C or more, and any swimming is lake swimming confined to the warm months.

Year-round weather is much alike, with January highs of 3-4°C and July highs of 24-25°C, so the seasonal shape of a trip is the same in both. Both also have country within day-trip reach, with protected land close to a fifth of the surrounding area in each case.

Which traveller are you?

Walkers and lake swimmers should take Interlaken. Nearly a fifth of the surrounding land is protected, there are 12 beaches nearby, and the driest stretch at 34-37mm falls before the summer rain arrives.

Families with children are better served in Munich. It has 2 theme parks within reach where Interlaken has none, many times as much park space near the centre, and many times as many attractions close in.

Anyone travelling for food, museums or a night out should choose Munich: many times as many restaurants and a wider spread of kitchens, many times as many museums, and many times as many bars and clubs.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €248 and €163, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of Interlaken or Munich. A small resort town and a large city can each sit far from their own country's average, and that gap can be wider than the gap between the two national figures.

No weather station near Interlaken records sunshine hours, so that side of the weather comparison is unmeasured rather than poor, and its monthly picture rests on temperature and rainfall alone. The beaches counted near both are lake shores: with no month of sea at 21°C or more, swimming is a short summer window.

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
Interlaken
3
5
9
15
17
22
24
23
18
14
7
4
Munich
4
6
10
15
19
23
25
25
20
15
8
5
Rainfall, mm
Interlaken
53
41
37
34
52
48
62
61
38
43
51
68
Munich
52
46
61
56
107
121
119
117
78
67
58
59
Daylight, hours per day
Interlaken
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
9
9
Munich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Interlaken
No sunshine record
Munich
2
3
5
6
7
7
8
8
6
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Interlaken: 2005-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Meiringen / Unterbach (19.3 km from centre). Munich: 1991-2020 normals, München (1.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Interlaken is at its best from June to September, when highs sit at 22-24°C and rainfall stays at 38-62mm. Early spring is drier still, at 34-37mm, though daytime temperatures are much lower and walking rather than swimming is the point.

Munich's warmest months are July and August at 25°C, but May to August each bring 107-121mm of rain, roughly double Interlaken's summer. September and October are the drier compromise, at 67-78mm with highs of 15-20°C.

Getting there

Flying fromInterlakenMunich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 100 km
1 h 45 m
€116-210
MUC · 29 km
HamburgHAM, XFW, LBC
1 h 30 m
no fares
ZRH · 100 km
1 h 20 m
€164-220
MUC · 29 km
BerlinBER
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 100 km
1 h 15 m
€159-217
MUC · 29 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 100 km
2 h 30 m
€127-141
MUC · 29 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 100 km
2 h 25 m
€227-312
1 stop
MUC · 29 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 100 km
1 h 25 m
€227-267
MUC · 29 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 100 km
6 h 0 m
€292-332
MUC · 29 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 100 km
8 h 15 m
no fares
MUC · 29 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 100 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
MUC · 29 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 100 km
12 h 15 m
no fares
MUC · 29 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

MeasureInterlakenMunich
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshGerman
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation571 m519 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)100 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsMunich Airport (MUC)29 km from centre208 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureInterlakenMunich
City population6,1231,510,378
People per km²1,4244,861
Museums within 10 km374
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre2289

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Interlaken or Munich 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). 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.