VacationSelector

Lucerne or Vienna?

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.

Vienna
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on nightlife and museums & heritage 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.

LucerneVienna
Beaches & swimming. Lucerne and Vienna are level on 0.
LucerneVienna
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1622
Coast distance669 km10,000 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Vienna leads by 30 points.30
LucerneVienna
Score4777
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2691,617
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2537
Museums & heritage. Vienna leads by 41 points.41
LucerneVienna
Score4081
Museums within 10 km23192
Museums within 2 km of centre13110
Share of museums within 2 km %5757
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Vienna leads by 46 points.46
LucerneVienna
Score2874
Drinking venues within 4 km2021,948
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1511,089
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7556
Nightclubs within 4 km11108
Nature & day trips. Vienna leads by 7 points.7
LucerneVienna
Score2532
Protected land share 50 km %74
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km29 hectares93 hectares
Good for families. Vienna leads by 31 points.31
LucerneVienna
Score3869
Tourist attractions within 2 km1546
Park area within 2 km29 hectares93 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km14
Sights concentration. Vienna leads by 40 points.40
LucerneVienna
Score3575
Notable places within 2 km29287
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Vienna leads by 24 points.24
LucerneVienna
Score3559
Price level global110.576.9
Daily budget€248€160
Year-round weather. Vienna leads by 8 points.8
LucerneVienna
Score5361
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 24.3 °C3.3 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall60 mm to 128 mm38 mm to 80 mm
Dry months01
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
Vienna
3
6
11
17
21
25
27
27
21
15
9
4
Rainfall, mm
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Vienna
42
38
52
42
80
70
78
71
64
47
46
46
Daylight, hours per day
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Vienna
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1
Vienna
2
4
5
7
8
8
9
9
6
4
2
2

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). Vienna: 1991-2020 normals, Wien / Hohe Warte (4.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLucerneVienna
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 10 m
€105-189
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 5 m
€121-285
VIE · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 25 m
€143-152
VIE · 18 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 50 m
€180-245
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
BerlinBER
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 15 m
€171-190
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 15 m
€117-169
VIE · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
5 h 40 m
€292-307
VIE · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
8 h 40 m
€736-786
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
10 h 35 m
no fares
VIE · 18 km
CancunCUN
10 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
11 h 30 m
no fares
VIE · 18 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

MeasureLucerneVienna
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshGerman, Austrian Sign Language
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 m151 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsVienna International Airport (VIE)18 km from centre204 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureLucerneVienna
City population86,2342,028,289
People per km²2,9634,890
Museums within 10 km14152
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre46113

Where else could you go?

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