VacationSelector

Krakow or Prague?

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

Your match

Krakow
58
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Prague
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration 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 Krakow if the trip is built around history and day trips: 4 UNESCO-listed places within reach against Prague's 1, and a little more for younger children in the way of theme parks and attractions near the centre.

Choose Prague if the evenings and the walking matter more: many more places to drink, roughly twice as many restaurants near the centre, and twice as much to see on foot.

Scoreboard

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

KrakowPrague
Beaches & swimming. Krakow and Prague are level on 0.
KrakowPrague
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km97
Coast distance456 km10,000 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Prague leads by 7 points.7
KrakowPrague
Score6875
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0321,866
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3029
Museums & heritage. Krakow leads by 3 points.3
KrakowPrague
Score7572
Museums within 10 km84138
Museums within 2 km of centre69100
Share of museums within 2 km %8272
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Prague leads by 20 points.20
KrakowPrague
Score5777
Drinking venues within 4 km8362,248
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre6971,457
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8365
Nightclubs within 4 km54123
Nature & day trips. Krakow leads by 1 points.1
KrakowPrague
Score4645
Protected land share 50 km %1412
Landscape blanket share 50 km %18
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km79 hectares183 hectares
Good for families. Prague leads by 1 points.1
KrakowPrague
Score7475
Tourist attractions within 2 km7754
Park area within 2 km79 hectares183 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km43
Sights concentration. Prague leads by 8 points.8
KrakowPrague
Score6876
Notable places within 2 km198310
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Krakow leads by 4 points.4
KrakowPrague
Score7975
Price level global4955.2
Daily budget€133€107
Year-round weather. Prague leads by 3 points.3
KrakowPrague
Score5861
Monthly daytime high1.5 °C to 25.3 °C2.2 °C to 25.3 °C
Monthly rainfall31 mm to 100 mm22 mm to 80 mm
Dry months47
0255075100

Where they differ

Krakow's edge is what sits within a day's travel: 4 UNESCO-listed places against Prague's 1. Nearer in, it has somewhat more tourist attractions than Prague and 4 theme parks within reach against Prague's 3.

Prague is stronger for going out and for walking: about three times as many places to drink and twice as many nightclubs, most near the centre; about twice as many restaurants, though the range of kitchens is similar; and about twice as many notable places within walking distance.

Where they are alike

Neither is a swimming destination: no month brings sea at 21°C or more, and the 9 beaches near Krakow and 7 near Prague are a warm-afternoon extra rather than a reason to book.

They are also close on families, nature and the year's weather: both run daytime highs of about 2-25°C, both have a similar share of protected land nearby, and both mix attractions and park space near the centre.

Which traveller are you?

Someone planning a long evening: Prague. Roughly three times as many places to drink and twice as many nightclubs, most of them near the centre, and about twice as many restaurants within the same short walk.

History-minded travellers with a car or a train ticket: Krakow, with 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Prague's 1. Those staying put may prefer Prague, which has about twice as many museums.

Families are near enough a tie. Krakow has more attractions near the centre and 4 theme parks within reach against Prague's 3; Prague answers with about twice as much park space near the centre.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €133 for Krakow's country and €107 for Prague's, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of either city. A capital or a heavily visited city can sit far from its own national average, and that gap can exceed the difference between the two countries, so it says little about what either trip will cost.

The other gap is sunshine: no weather station near Krakow records it, so that figure is missing rather than low, and Krakow's monthly picture rests on temperature and rainfall alone. That side of the weather comparison is simply unmeasured.

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
Prague
2
5
9
16
20
23
25
25
20
14
7
3
Rainfall, mm
Krakow
38
31
38
47
79
77
100
75
67
51
41
35
Prague
26
22
31
27
65
80
76
79
44
36
30
30
Daylight, hours per day
Krakow
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Prague
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Krakow
No sunshine record
Prague
2
3
4
6
7
8
8
7
5
4
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). Prague: 1991-2020 normals, Praha-Libus (8.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Krakow's summer window is June to August, and August is the pick: highs of 25°C with 75mm of rain, against July's wetter 100mm. Either side of that it cools quickly and the rain does not ease much.

Prague is the better bet either side of high summer. Spring is markedly drier there: April brings 27mm, and September holds 20°C on 44mm against Krakow's 67mm, so autumn days out are less likely to be interrupted.

Getting there

Flying fromKrakowPrague
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 20 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
1 h 55 m
€63-104
1 stop
PRG · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 10 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
1 h 40 m
€86-113
PRG · 12 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 35 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
1 h 10 m
€126-144
PRG · 12 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
1 h 45 m
€62-97
PRG · 12 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 50 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
1 h 25 m
€57-79
PRG · 12 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 40 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
2 h 15 m
€111-155
PRG · 12 km
AntalyaAYT
2 h 40 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
3 h 0 m
€179-197
1 stop
PRG · 12 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 25 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
3 h 45 m
€220-244
1 stop
PRG · 12 km
OsloOSL, TRF
2 h 10 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
2 h 0 m
€141-201
1 stop
PRG · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 45 m
no fares
KRK · 11 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
PRG · 12 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

MeasureKrakowPrague
Official languagePolishCzech
CurrencyZloty (PLN)Czech Koruna (CZK)
SocketsCE50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation219 m235 m
Main airportKraków John Paul II International Airport (KRK)11 km from centre133 non-stop destinationsVáclav Havel Airport Prague (PRG)12 km from centre175 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureKrakowPrague
City population804,2371,397,880
People per km²2,4592,817
Museums within 10 km11488
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre6889

Where else could you go?

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