Interlaken or Stuttgart?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.
Wins on nature & day trips 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 you want a small place, 6120 people, where lake swimming is at hand, with 12 beaches nearby, and where the attractions and museums sit within a short walk of the centre.
Choose Stuttgart if you want restaurants, bars and museums in quantity, protected countryside across a far larger share of the surrounding land, and theme parks within reach for children.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Interlaken and Stuttgart are level on 0.
| Interlaken | Stuttgart | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 0 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 12 | 3 |
| Coast distance | 713 km | 476 km |
| Water distance | — | — |
Places to eat. Stuttgart leads by 30 points.30
| Interlaken | Stuttgart | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 29 | 59 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 118 | 575 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 17 | 29 |
Museums & heritage. Stuttgart leads by 33 points.33
| Interlaken | Stuttgart | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 23 | 56 |
| Museums within 10 km | 5 | 65 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 2 | 21 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 40 | 32 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 2 | 3 |
Nightlife. Stuttgart leads by 45 points.45
| Interlaken | Stuttgart | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 4 | 49 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 42 | 524 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 38 | 374 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 90 | 71 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 3 | 53 |
Nature & day trips. Stuttgart leads by 53 points.53
| Interlaken | Stuttgart | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 27 | 80 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 19 | 51 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 31 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 100 |
| Park area within 2 km | 5 hectares | 78 hectares |
Good for families. Stuttgart leads by 31 points.31
| Interlaken | Stuttgart | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 14 | 45 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 11 | 11 |
| Park area within 2 km | 5 hectares | 78 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 0 | 2 |
Sights concentration. Stuttgart leads by 22 points.22
| Interlaken | Stuttgart | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 22 | 44 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 14 | 50 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Stuttgart leads by 25 points.25
| Interlaken | Stuttgart | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 35 | 60 |
| Price level global | 110.5 | 75.9 |
| Daily budget | €248 | €163 |
Year-round weather. Stuttgart leads by 6 points.6
| Interlaken | Stuttgart | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 57 | 63 |
| Monthly daytime high | 2.8 °C to 23.6 °C | 5.6 °C to 25.9 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 34 mm to 68 mm | 33 mm to 79 mm |
| Dry months | 3 | 3 |
Where they differ
Interlaken is the smaller, tighter option: 12 beaches nearby against Stuttgart's 3, roughly as many tourist attractions close to the centre, and museums packed into a shorter walk.
Stuttgart leads where volume counts. Around it, 51% of the land is protected against 19% around Interlaken, with far more park space near the centre. It has many times as many bars and clubs, many times as many museums, and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 2.
Where they are alike
Neither is a swimming destination. Interlaken has 12 beaches nearby and Stuttgart 3, but neither sees a month of water at 21°C or more, so a swim is an occasional summer afternoon rather than a reason to go.
Otherwise they share a temperate rhythm, cold winters, warm summers, and three drier months apiece at 40mm of rain or less. In both, the notable places sit close to the centre, so walking covers most of them.
Which traveller are you?
Anyone travelling with children will find more in Stuttgart: 2 theme parks within reach where Interlaken has none, and much more park space near the centre. Interlaken matches it only on the number of attractions close in.
Someone who wants long evenings out, varied kitchens and a full run of museums should choose Stuttgart, which has many times as many restaurants, bars and clubs, most of them near the centre.
A traveller who wants a compact base and swimming should take Interlaken: 12 beaches nearby against Stuttgart's 3, and a centre small enough that its museums and attractions sit within one walk.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €248 against €163, are national price estimates for restaurants and hotels in the two countries, not measurements of either city. A small resort town and a city of 633000 people can each sit far from their own national average, so treat the gap as background, not as what a trip will cost.
No weather station near Interlaken records sunshine hours, so that figure is missing rather than low and the monthly picture there rests on temperature and rainfall alone; the sunshine side of this comparison is unmeasured. Beaches nearby also say nothing about water temperature, which reaches 21°C in neither place.
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.
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). Stuttgart: 1991-2020 normals, Stuttgart / Neckartal (2.8 km from centre).
Interlaken is at its best from June to September: 22-24°C in midsummer, and September at 18°C with 38mm, the driest of the warm months. July and August bring 61-62mm, so summer rain is real.
Stuttgart is warmer across the same stretch, 24-26°C from June to August, but wetter, with 63-79mm from May to July. Its advantage is the shoulder: March and April at 12-16°C with 37-43mm, when Interlaken sits at 9-15°C.
Getting there
| Flying from | Interlaken | Stuttgart |
|---|---|---|
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 2 h 45 m €110-133 ZRH · 100 km | 2 h 40 m €139-291 STR · 10 km |
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 1 h 35 m €110-163 ZRH · 100 km | 1 h 35 m no fares STR · 10 km |
| PalmaPMI | 1 h 50 m €84-103 ZRH · 100 km | 2 h 0 m no fares STR · 10 km |
| SingaporeSIN, XSP | 12 h 45 m no fares ZRH · 100 km | 12 h 45 m no fares FRA · 146 km |
| AntalyaAYT | 3 h 15 m €154-180 ZRH · 100 km | 3 h 15 m €194-322 1 stop STR · 10 km |
| BerlinBER | 1 h 25 m €140-176 ZRH · 100 km | 1 h 15 m €197-289 1 stop STR · 10 km |
| BarcelonaBCN | 1 h 40 m €114-151 ZRH · 100 km | 1 h 50 m €111-165 STR · 10 km |
| Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE | 12 h 0 m no fares ZRH · 100 km | 12 h 10 m no fares FRA · 146 km |
| HurghadaHRG | 4 h 20 m no fares ZRH · 100 km | 4 h 25 m no fares STR · 10 km |
| New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA | 8 h 5 m €606-782 1 stop ZRH · 100 km | 7 h 55 m €537-713 FRA · 146 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
| Measure | Interlaken | Stuttgart |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | French, German, Italian, Romansh | German |
| Currency | Swiss Franc (CHF) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CJ230 V, 50 Hz | CF230 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 112 |
| Elevation | 571 m | 245 m |
| Main airport | Zürich Airport (ZRH)100 km from centre181 non-stop destinations | Stuttgart Airport (STR)10 km from centre121 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 10 days | 12 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Interlaken | Stuttgart |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 6,123 | 633,484 |
| People per km² | 1,424 | 3,054 |
| Museums within 10 km | 3 | 42 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 2 | 3 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 22 | 59 |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Interlaken or Stuttgart somewhere new.