VacationSelector

Krakow or Lucerne?

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

Your match

Krakow
✓ Best match
58
match

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

Lucerne
33
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.

KrakowLucerne
Beaches & swimming. Krakow and Lucerne are level on 0.
KrakowLucerne
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km916
Coast distance456 km669 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Krakow leads by 21 points.21
KrakowLucerne
Score6847
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,032269
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3025
Museums & heritage. Krakow leads by 35 points.35
KrakowLucerne
Score7540
Museums within 10 km8423
Museums within 2 km of centre6913
Share of museums within 2 km %8257
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Krakow leads by 29 points.29
KrakowLucerne
Score5728
Drinking venues within 4 km836202
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre697151
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8375
Nightclubs within 4 km5411
Nature & day trips. Krakow leads by 21 points.21
KrakowLucerne
Score4625
Protected land share 50 km %147
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km79 hectares29 hectares
Good for families. Krakow leads by 36 points.36
KrakowLucerne
Score7438
Tourist attractions within 2 km7715
Park area within 2 km79 hectares29 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Krakow leads by 33 points.33
KrakowLucerne
Score6835
Notable places within 2 km19829
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Krakow leads by 44 points.44
KrakowLucerne
Score7935
Price level global49110.5
Daily budget€133€248
Year-round weather. Krakow leads by 5 points.5
KrakowLucerne
Score5853
Monthly daytime high1.5 °C to 25.3 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall31 mm to 100 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months40
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
Krakow
2
4
8
15
20
23
25
25
19
14
8
3
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Rainfall, mm
Krakow
38
31
38
47
79
77
100
75
67
51
41
35
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Krakow
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Krakow
No sunshine record
Lucerne
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. Krakow: 1991-2020 normals, Krakow (10.1 km from centre). Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromKrakowLucerne
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 20 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 35 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 55 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 10 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
OsloOSL, TRF
2 h 10 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 40 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 49 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 5 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
1 h 25 m
€174-215
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 30 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 45 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
ColomboCMB
9 h 20 m
no fares
KTW · 76 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 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

MeasureKrakowLucerne
Official languagePolishFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyZloty (PLN)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCE50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation219 m436 m
Main airportKraków John Paul II International Airport (KRK)11 km from centre133 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureKrakowLucerne
City population804,23786,234
People per km²2,4592,963
Museums within 10 km11414
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre6846

Where else could you go?

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