VacationSelector

Lucerne or Philadelphia?

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.

Philadelphia
✓ Best match
51
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat 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.

LucernePhiladelphia
Beaches & swimming. Lucerne and Philadelphia are level on 0.
LucernePhiladelphia
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km161
Coast distance669 km13 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Philadelphia leads by 30 points.30
LucernePhiladelphia
Score4777
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2691,714
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2535
Museums & heritage. Philadelphia leads by 20 points.20
LucernePhiladelphia
Score4060
Museums within 10 km2389
Museums within 2 km of centre1348
Share of museums within 2 km %5754
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Philadelphia leads by 31 points.31
LucernePhiladelphia
Score2859
Drinking venues within 4 km202930
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre151575
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7562
Nightclubs within 4 km1141
Nature & day trips. Philadelphia leads by 24 points.24
LucernePhiladelphia
Score2549
Protected land share 50 km %714
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10089
Park area within 2 km29 hectares75 hectares
Good for families. Philadelphia leads by 15 points.15
LucernePhiladelphia
Score3853
Tourist attractions within 2 km1516
Park area within 2 km29 hectares75 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km14
Sights concentration. Philadelphia leads by 19 points.19
LucernePhiladelphia
Score3554
Notable places within 2 km2988
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Philadelphia leads by 8 points.8
LucernePhiladelphia
Score3543
Price level global110.5100
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. Philadelphia leads by 7 points.7
LucernePhiladelphia
Score5360
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 24.3 °C5.2 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall60 mm to 128 mm69 mm to 112 mm
Dry months00
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
Philadelphia
5
7
12
18
24
28
31
30
26
20
13
8
Rainfall, mm
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Philadelphia
79
69
101
88
86
103
111
109
112
88
74
101
Daylight, hours per day
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Philadelphia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1
Philadelphia
4
5
6
7
9
9
8
9
7
7
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). Philadelphia: 1991-2020 normals, Philadelphia International Airport (11.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLucernePhiladelphia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
9 h 5 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 140 km
BerlinBER
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 49 km
8 h 15 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 49 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 25 m
€174-215
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
8 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
13 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
JFK · 140 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

MeasureLucernePhiladelphia
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation436 m12 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsPhiladelphia International Airport (PHL)11 km from centre128 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureLucernePhiladelphia
City population86,2341,603,797
People per km²2,9634,339
Museums within 10 km1454
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre4675

Where else could you go?

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