VacationSelector

Lisbon or Zurich?

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

Your match

Lisbon
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Zurich
44
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.

LisbonZurich
Beaches & swimming. Lisbon leads by 57 points.57
LisbonZurich
Score570
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km2423
Coast distance2 km632 km
Water distance2 km
Places to eat. Lisbon leads by 13 points.13
LisbonZurich
Score8067
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,496974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3130
Museums & heritage. Lisbon leads by 14 points.14
LisbonZurich
Score7056
Museums within 10 km12476
Museums within 2 km of centre5437
Share of museums within 2 km %4449
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Lisbon leads by 11 points.11
LisbonZurich
Score6554
Drinking venues within 4 km1,225676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre956553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7882
Nightclubs within 4 km6574
Nature & day trips. Lisbon leads by 19 points.19
LisbonZurich
Score5637
Protected land share 50 km %1116
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %54100
Park area within 2 km77 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Lisbon leads by 33 points.33
LisbonZurich
Score6936
Tourist attractions within 2 km828
Park area within 2 km77 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Lisbon leads by 7 points.7
LisbonZurich
Score6659
Notable places within 2 km169119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lisbon leads by 39 points.39
LisbonZurich
Score7435
Price level global55.9110.5
Daily budget€109€248
Year-round weather. Lisbon leads by 25 points.25
LisbonZurich
Score7853
Monthly daytime high14.9 °C to 28.4 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 121 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
Lisbon
15
16
19
20
23
26
28
28
26
23
18
15
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Lisbon
15
15
15
15
16
18
18
19
19
18
17
16
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Lisbon
104
73
72
67
53
13
3
7
36
108
121
102
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Lisbon
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Lisbon
5
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
5
5
Zurich
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. Lisbon: 1991-2020 normals, Lisboa / Geof (1.1 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLisbonZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 30 m
€112-185
LIS · 7 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€118-145
LIS · 7 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
€64-74
LIS · 7 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 50 m
€74-97
LIS · 7 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 50 m
€167-189
LIS · 7 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 0 m
€621-718
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€164-250
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
10 h 0 m
€744-1049
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 55 m
€421-500
2 stops
LIS · 7 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
SeoulICN, GMP
12 h 55 m
no fares
LIS · 7 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 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

MeasureLisbonZurich
Official languagePortugueseFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation100 m408 m
Main airportLisbon Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS)7 km from centre153 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureLisbonZurich
City population545,796452,421
People per km²5,4535,147
Museums within 10 km7863
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre10678
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lisbon or Zurich 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.