VacationSelector

London or Lucerne?

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

Your match

London
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration 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.

LondonLucerne
Beaches & swimming. London and Lucerne are level on 0.
LondonLucerne
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km4716
Coast distance43 km669 km
Water distance
Places to eat. London leads by 41 points.41
LondonLucerne
Score8847
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,317269
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4025
Museums & heritage. London leads by 32 points.32
LondonLucerne
Score7240
Museums within 10 km14823
Museums within 2 km of centre4913
Share of museums within 2 km %3357
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. London leads by 67 points.67
LondonLucerne
Score9528
Drinking venues within 4 km5,327202
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,443151
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4675
Nightclubs within 4 km31211
Nature & day trips. London leads by 15 points.15
LondonLucerne
Score4025
Protected land share 50 km %167
Landscape blanket share 50 km %140
Land share of disc %97100
Park area within 2 km84 hectares29 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 37 points.37
LondonLucerne
Score7538
Tourist attractions within 2 km8515
Park area within 2 km84 hectares29 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. London leads by 54 points.54
LondonLucerne
Score8935
Notable places within 2 km64929
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. London leads by 19 points.19
LondonLucerne
Score5435
Price level global84.9110.5
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. London leads by 10 points.10
LondonLucerne
Score6353
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 23.8 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 67 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months10
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
London
8
9
12
15
18
22
24
23
20
16
11
9
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Rainfall, mm
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
2
2
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. London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre). Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLondonLucerne
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
€79-116
LGW · 40 km
1 h 50 m
€84-103
ZRH · 49 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€61-144
LGW · 40 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 49 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
€124-216
LHR · 23 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 5 m
€146-170
LHR · 23 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
AntalyaAYT
4 h 5 m
€144-189
LGW · 40 km
3 h 15 m
€154-180
ZRH · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 35 m
€119-292
1 stop
LGW · 40 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 10 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 55 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
CancunCUN
10 h 5 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
10 h 55 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 2026-09 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

MeasureLondonLucerne
Official languageEnglishFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation4 m436 m
Main airportLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureLondonLucerne
City population8,799,72886,234
People per km²5,5982,963
Museums within 10 km21514
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre11646

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow London 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). 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.