VacationSelector

Lucerne or Porto?

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.

Porto
✓ Best match
62
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.

LucernePorto
Beaches & swimming. Porto leads by 60 points.60
LucernePorto
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1652
Coast distance669 km4 km
Water distance3 km
Places to eat. Porto leads by 21 points.21
LucernePorto
Score4768
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2691,172
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2527
Museums & heritage. Porto leads by 31 points.31
LucernePorto
Score4071
Museums within 10 km23101
Museums within 2 km of centre1357
Share of museums within 2 km %5756
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Porto leads by 30 points.30
LucernePorto
Score2858
Drinking venues within 4 km202900
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre151570
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7563
Nightclubs within 4 km1138
Nature & day trips. Porto leads by 8 points.8
LucernePorto
Score2533
Protected land share 50 km %77
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10061
Park area within 2 km29 hectares30 hectares
Good for families. Porto leads by 27 points.27
LucernePorto
Score3865
Tourist attractions within 2 km15122
Park area within 2 km29 hectares30 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Porto leads by 19 points.19
LucernePorto
Score3554
Notable places within 2 km2985
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Porto leads by 39 points.39
LucernePorto
Score3574
Price level global110.555.9
Daily budget€248€109
Year-round weather. Porto leads by 18 points.18
LucernePorto
Score5371
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 24.3 °C13.8 °C to 25.2 °C
Monthly rainfall60 mm to 128 mm22 mm to 181 mm
Dry months03
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
Porto
14
15
18
18
21
23
25
25
24
20
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
Porto
14
13
14
14
16
17
17
17
17
17
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Porto
151
97
104
99
89
35
22
33
75
158
181
173
Daylight, hours per day
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Porto
10
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
Porto
5
5
7
8
9
9
10
9
8
5
5
4

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). Porto: 1991-2020 normals, Porto / Serra Do Pilar (2.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLucernePorto
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 5 m
€88-127
OPO · 12 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 10 m
€90-144
1 stop
OPO · 12 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 10 m
€70-124
OPO · 12 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 40 m
€188-233
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 0 m
€81
OPO · 12 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 45 m
€81-135
OPO · 12 km
GenevaGVA
55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 10 m
€128-166
1 stop
OPO · 12 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 35 m
€158-202
1 stop
OPO · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
OPO · 12 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
10 h 15 m
no fares
OPO · 12 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 15 m
no fares
BSL · 85 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
OPO · 12 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

MeasureLucernePorto
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshPortuguese
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation436 m104 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsFrancisco de Sá Carneiro Airport (OPO)12 km from centre132 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureLucernePorto
City population86,234231,800
People per km²2,9635,599
Museums within 10 km1442
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre4670
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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