VacationSelector

Los Angeles or Lucerne?

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

Your match

Los Angeles
✓ Best match
53
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather with your weighting.

Lucerne
33
match

Wins on good for families with your weighting.

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.

Los AngelesLucerne
Beaches & swimming. Los Angeles leads by 29 points.29
Los AngelesLucerne
Score290
Beaches 25 km11
Beaches 10 km016
Swim season months00
Warmest sea temp20.2 °C
Scoring variantbeachScoreWideRing
Declared2026-08-25
Registerseed/editorial-overrides.json
Coast distance669 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Los Angeles leads by 19 points.19
Los AngelesLucerne
Score6647
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,337269
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2225
Museums & heritage. Los Angeles leads by 9 points.9
Los AngelesLucerne
Score4940
Museums within 10 km6923
Museums within 2 km of centre2313
Share of museums within 2 km %3357
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Los Angeles leads by 26 points.26
Los AngelesLucerne
Score5428
Drinking venues within 4 km660202
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre432151
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6575
Nightclubs within 4 km6411
Nature & day trips. Los Angeles leads by 37 points.37
Los AngelesLucerne
Score6225
Protected land share 50 km %267
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %80100
Park area within 2 km20 hectares29 hectares
Good for families. Lucerne leads by 5 points.5
Los AngelesLucerne
Score3338
Tourist attractions within 2 km1115
Park area within 2 km20 hectares29 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Los Angeles leads by 19 points.19
Los AngelesLucerne
Score5435
Notable places within 2 km8829
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Los Angeles leads by 8 points.8
Los AngelesLucerne
Score4335
Price level global100110.5
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. Los Angeles leads by 34 points.34
Los AngelesLucerne
Score8753
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 24.7 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 76 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months80
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
Los Angeles
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
24
22
19
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Los Angeles
15
15
15
15
17
18
20
20
20
19
17
16
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Los Angeles
73
76
44
16
7
2
1
0
3
13
21
57
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Los Angeles
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
10
10
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Los Angeles
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. Los Angeles: 1991-2020 normals, Los Angeles Airport (18.5 km from centre). Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLos AngelesLucerne
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
San FranciscoSFO
1 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
Las VegasLAS
1 h 5 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
4 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 25 m
€600-640
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 0 m
€785-892
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
11 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
13 h 35 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 49 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
16 h 25 m
€964-1015
LAX · 19 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
12 h 0 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

MeasureLos AngelesLucerne
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation106 m436 m
Main airportLos Angeles International Airport (LAX)19 km from centre180 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureLos AngelesLucerne
City population3,898,74786,234
People per km²2,9942,963
Museums within 10 km3814
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre4646
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Los Angeles 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.