VacationSelector

Lucerne or Malaga?

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

Your match

Lucerne
33
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

Malaga
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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.

LucerneMalaga
Beaches & swimming. Malaga leads by 66 points.66
LucerneMalaga
Score066
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km1621
Coast distance669 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Malaga leads by 22 points.22
LucerneMalaga
Score4769
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2691,002
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2534
Museums & heritage. Malaga leads by 13 points.13
LucerneMalaga
Score4053
Museums within 10 km2340
Museums within 2 km of centre1335
Share of museums within 2 km %5788
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Malaga leads by 26 points.26
LucerneMalaga
Score2854
Drinking venues within 4 km202715
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre151486
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7568
Nightclubs within 4 km1145
Nature & day trips. Malaga leads by 18 points.18
LucerneMalaga
Score2543
Protected land share 50 km %77
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10063
Park area within 2 km29 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Malaga leads by 15 points.15
LucerneMalaga
Score3853
Tourist attractions within 2 km1533
Park area within 2 km29 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Malaga leads by 2 points.2
LucerneMalaga
Score3537
Notable places within 2 km2933
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Malaga leads by 36 points.36
LucerneMalaga
Score3571
Price level global110.560.8
Daily budget€248€122
Year-round weather. Malaga leads by 29 points.29
LucerneMalaga
Score5382
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 24.3 °C17.2 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall60 mm to 128 mm0 mm to 88 mm
Dry months05
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
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Malaga
17
18
20
22
25
29
31
32
28
24
20
18
Sea temperature, °C
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
Malaga
15
15
15
16
18
20
22
23
22
20
17
16
Rainfall, mm
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Malaga
62
55
66
41
23
4
0
3
25
60
78
88
Daylight, hours per day
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Malaga
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1
Malaga
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre). Malaga: 1991-2020 normals, Malaga / Aeropuerto (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLucerneMalaga
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 35 m
€73-109
AGP · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 55 m
€146-177
AGP · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 25 m
€92
AGP · 9 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
DublinDUB
2 h 5 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 50 m
€122-139
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 15 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 45 m
€110-142
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
BerlinBER
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 49 km
3 h 20 m
€141-206
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 15 m
no fares
BSL · 85 km
1 h 25 m
€58-149
AGP · 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

MeasureLucerneMalaga
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshSpanish
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation436 m18 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsMálaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP)9 km from centre165 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureLucerneMalaga
City population86,234599,063
People per km²2,9631,517
Museums within 10 km1432
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre4665
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

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