VacationSelector

Lucerne or Montpellier?

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

Your match

Lucerne
33
match

Wins on museums & heritage with your weighting.

Montpellier
✓ Best match
47
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.

LucerneMontpellier
Beaches & swimming. Montpellier leads by 32 points.32
LucerneMontpellier
Score032
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km168
Coast distance669 km9 km
Water distance9 km
Places to eat. Montpellier leads by 18 points.18
LucerneMontpellier
Score4765
Restaurants within 2 km of centre269737
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2534
Museums & heritage. Lucerne leads by 14 points.14
LucerneMontpellier
Score4026
Museums within 10 km2314
Museums within 2 km of centre133
Share of museums within 2 km %5721
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Montpellier leads by 10 points.10
LucerneMontpellier
Score2838
Drinking venues within 4 km202318
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre151265
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7583
Nightclubs within 4 km1125
Nature & day trips. Montpellier leads by 18 points.18
LucerneMontpellier
Score2543
Protected land share 50 km %715
Landscape blanket share 50 km %010
Land share of disc %10070
Park area within 2 km29 hectares55 hectares
Good for families. Montpellier leads by 6 points.6
LucerneMontpellier
Score3844
Tourist attractions within 2 km158
Park area within 2 km29 hectares55 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km17
Sights concentration. Montpellier leads by 3 points.3
LucerneMontpellier
Score3538
Notable places within 2 km2935
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Montpellier leads by 27 points.27
LucerneMontpellier
Score3562
Price level global110.573.7
Daily budget€248€160
Year-round weather. Montpellier leads by 21 points.21
LucerneMontpellier
Score5374
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 24.3 °C12 °C to 29.6 °C
Monthly rainfall60 mm to 128 mm17 mm to 93 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
Montpellier
12
13
16
19
23
27
30
29
25
21
16
13
Sea temperature, °C
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
Daylight, hours per day
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Montpellier
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1
Montpellier
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
10
8
6
5
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). Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLucerneMontpellier
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 40 m
€188-233
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 109 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 30 m
no fares
BSL · 85 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MunichMUC
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
TunisTUN
2 h 5 m
no fares
BSL · 85 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 45 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 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 2026-09, 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

MeasureLucerneMontpellier
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshFrench
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation436 m7 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLucerneMontpellier
City population86,234310,240
People per km²2,9635,452
Museums within 10 km1414
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre4665
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lucerne or Montpellier 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.