Krakow or Vienna?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Too close to call, 1 point apart
Wins on value for money and nature & day trips with your weighting.
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.
The verdict
Choose Krakow if you want attractions and museums packed tightly around one centre, family days out, and country within reach where 14% of the land is protected.
Choose Vienna if you want the wider museum and restaurant range, more places to drink and dance, and a warmer, earlier spring, with April highs near 17°C.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Krakow and Vienna are level on 0.
| Krakow | Vienna | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 0 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 9 | 22 |
| Coast distance | 456 km | 10,000 km |
| Water distance | — | — |
Places to eat. Vienna leads by 9 points.9
| Krakow | Vienna | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 68 | 77 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 1,032 | 1,617 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 30 | 37 |
Museums & heritage. Vienna leads by 6 points.6
| Krakow | Vienna | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 75 | 81 |
| Museums within 10 km | 84 | 192 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 69 | 110 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 82 | 57 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 4 | 3 |
Nightlife. Vienna leads by 17 points.17
| Krakow | Vienna | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 57 | 74 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 836 | 1,948 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 697 | 1,089 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 83 | 56 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 54 | 108 |
Nature & day trips. Krakow leads by 14 points.14
| Krakow | Vienna | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 46 | 32 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 14 | 4 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 1 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 100 |
| Park area within 2 km | 79 hectares | 93 hectares |
Good for families. Krakow leads by 5 points.5
| Krakow | Vienna | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 74 | 69 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 77 | 46 |
| Park area within 2 km | 79 hectares | 93 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 4 | 4 |
Sights concentration. Vienna leads by 7 points.7
| Krakow | Vienna | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 68 | 75 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 198 | 287 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Krakow leads by 20 points.20
| Krakow | Vienna | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 79 | 59 |
| Price level global | 49 | 76.9 |
| Daily budget | €133 | €160 |
Year-round weather. Vienna leads by 3 points.3
| Krakow | Vienna | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 58 | 61 |
| Monthly daytime high | 1.5 °C to 25.3 °C | 3.3 °C to 26.8 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 31 mm to 100 mm | 38 mm to 80 mm |
| Dry months | 4 | 1 |
Where they differ
Krakow has about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre as Vienna, and its museums sit tightly around the core, with 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Vienna's 3. Around the city, 14% of the land is protected, against 4% around Vienna. The estimated daily budget for Krakow's country is €133 against €160 for Vienna's.
Vienna has about twice as many restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens, twice as many bars and clubs, and about twice as many museums.
Where they are alike
Neither is a place to swim. Vienna counts 22 beaches nearby against Krakow's 9, but neither has a month with sea at 21°C or more, so swimming is not what either trip is built on.
Both run a full continental year, from 2-3°C in January to 25-27°C in July, and both lead with museums and heritage in dense, walkable centres, and both work for families, with theme parks within reach.
Which traveller are you?
Museum-first travellers: Vienna. It has about twice as many museums as Krakow and more notable places within walking distance of the centre, plus about twice as many restaurants near the centre when the galleries close.
Families: Krakow. It has about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre, and both cities have 4 theme parks within reach, but Krakow adds open country nearby, with 14% of the surrounding land protected.
Night owls: Vienna. About twice as many bars and twice as many nightclubs, though only about half of them sit near the centre, so expect some travel between places rather than one walkable strip.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €133 and €160, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels, not measurements of Krakow or Vienna. Both are heavily visited cities and either can sit far from its country's average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so they are a backdrop, not your daily spend.
No weather station near Krakow reports sunshine hours, so that figure is missing rather than low. Its month-by-month picture rests on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone, which leaves one side of the weather comparison unmeasured: a warm August at 75mm of rain says nothing about how bright the days are.
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. Krakow: 1991-2020 normals, Krakow (10.1 km from centre). Vienna: 1991-2020 normals, Wien / Hohe Warte (4.7 km from centre).
Krakow peaks in August, with highs of 25°C and 75mm of rain, and September still holds 19°C; July is wetter at 100mm. Its winter is cold, 2°C in January, but drier than Vienna's, which helps if you are visiting for the indoor months.
Vienna comes good earlier, from April at 17°C with 42mm through May at 21°C, and runs warmer in high summer, 27°C in July and August, with 78mm in July.
Getting there
| Flying from | Krakow | Vienna |
|---|---|---|
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 2 h 20 m no fares KRK · 11 km | 2 h 10 m €105-189 1 stop VIE · 18 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 1 h 35 m no fares KRK · 11 km | 1 h 25 m €143-152 VIE · 18 km |
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 2 h 10 m no fares KRK · 11 km | 1 h 55 m €112-162 VIE · 18 km |
| MilanMXP, BGY, LIN | 1 h 50 m no fares KRK · 11 km | 1 h 25 m €49-71 VIE · 18 km |
| AmsterdamAMS | 1 h 55 m no fares KRK · 11 km | 1 h 50 m €180-245 1 stop VIE · 18 km |
| RomeFCO, CIA | 1 h 55 m no fares KRK · 11 km | 1 h 35 m €84-160 VIE · 18 km |
| BarcelonaBCN | 2 h 40 m no fares KRK · 11 km | 2 h 15 m €117-169 VIE · 18 km |
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 2 h 5 m no fares KRK · 11 km | 2 h 5 m €121-285 VIE · 18 km |
| DubaiDXB, DWC | 5 h 30 m no fares KRK · 11 km | 5 h 40 m €292-307 VIE · 18 km |
| New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA | 8 h 45 m no fares KRK · 11 km | 8 h 40 m €736-786 1 stop VIE · 18 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 | Krakow | Vienna |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | Polish | German, Austrian Sign Language |
| Currency | Zloty (PLN) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CE50 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 | 219 m | 151 m |
| Main airport | Kraków John Paul II International Airport (KRK)11 km from centre133 non-stop destinations | Vienna International Airport (VIE)18 km from centre204 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 14 days | 16 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Krakow | Vienna |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 804,237 | 2,028,289 |
| People per km² | 2,459 | 4,890 |
| Museums within 10 km | 114 | 152 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 4 | 3 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 68 | 113 |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Krakow or Vienna somewhere new.