VacationSelector

Lyon or Annecy?

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

Your match

Lyon
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Annecy
34
match

Wins on nature & day trips with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Annecy if the surroundings matter more than the streets: a fifth of the land around it is protected, and it is the smaller, quieter base of the two.

Choose Lyon if you want the city itself to carry the trip, with many times as many restaurants near the centre, far more bars and clubs, and much more within walking distance.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

LyonAnnecy
Beaches & swimming. Lyon and Annecy are level on 0.
LyonAnnecy
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km269
Coast distance253 km260 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Lyon leads by 33 points.33
LyonAnnecy
Score7946
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,691343
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4020
Museums & heritage. Lyon leads by 25 points.25
LyonAnnecy
Score5530
Museums within 10 km539
Museums within 2 km of centre255
Share of museums within 2 km %4756
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Lyon leads by 38 points.38
LyonAnnecy
Score5820
Drinking venues within 4 km866140
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre611120
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7186
Nightclubs within 4 km476
Nature & day trips. Annecy leads by 3 points.3
LyonAnnecy
Score3336
Protected land share 50 km %620
Landscape blanket share 50 km %619
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km120 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Lyon leads by 30 points.30
LyonAnnecy
Score5929
Tourist attractions within 2 km254
Park area within 2 km120 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km23
Sights concentration. Lyon leads by 31 points.31
LyonAnnecy
Score5423
Notable places within 2 km8615
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lyon and Annecy are level on 62.
LyonAnnecy
Score6262
Price level global73.773.7
Daily budget€160€160
Year-round weather. Lyon leads by 5 points.5
LyonAnnecy
Score6459
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 28 °C5.1 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 101 mm55 mm to 94 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Annecy's advantage is what surrounds it. 20% of the land around it is protected against 6% around Lyon, and it has 3 theme parks within reach against Lyon's 2.

Lyon leads on the things a city centre does: it has many times as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens, many times as many bars and clubs, and many times as many notable places within walking distance. It also has about three times as much park space near the centre.

Where they are alike

Neither is a place to swim in the sea. Both are inland, and neither has a month with water at 21°C or more.

The weather runs on the same calendar: July is the warmest month in both, January the coolest, and neither has a month at 40mm of rain or less, so wet days are possible year-round. Both also work as a base for days out of town.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone building a trip around eating and going out should take Lyon: many times as many restaurants near the centre, a much wider range of kitchens, and many times as many bars and clubs, most of them central.

If the plan is days outside town, Annecy is the better base: 20% of the surrounding land is protected against 6% around Lyon, so more of the trip happens beyond the streets.

Families get more out of Lyon, which has many times as many attractions near the centre and about three times as much park space; Annecy counters with 3 theme parks within reach against 2.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value comparison between these two carries no information. It is a national price level applied to both, identical by construction, and says nothing about which city costs more day to day. The €160 daily budget beside it is one national estimate rather than a measurement of either place.

Beach counts mislead too. Lyon lists more nearby than Annecy, but neither has a month of water at 21°C or more, so those counts are not a swimming trip. Nor are the warm months the dry ones: neither city has a month at 40mm of rain or less, and October is the wettest in both.

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
Lyon
7
9
14
17
21
26
28
28
23
18
11
8
Annecy
5
7
12
16
20
24
27
26
21
16
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Annecy
71
55
61
66
77
81
77
80
87
94
87
88
Daylight, hours per day
Lyon
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Annecy
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
6
4
3
2
Annecy
2
3
6
6
7
8
9
8
6
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre). Annecy: 1991-2020 normals, Geneve-Cointrin (39 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Annecy is at its best from June to August, at 24-27°C, with rain at its lowest for the warm half of the year. September still reaches 21°C but turns wetter, and October to December runs 87-94mm.

Lyon's window is longer at both ends. It runs a little warmer month for month, September holds 23°C, and the winter is drier, with 43mm at its lowest against Annecy's 55mm. October is the wettest month in both, at 101mm here.

Getting there

Flying fromLyonAnnecy
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 35 m
€91-200
GVA · 38 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 10 m
€104-203
GVA · 38 km
PortoOPO
2 h 5 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
2 h 10 m
€127-171
1 stop
GVA · 38 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€167-217
LYS · 20 km
2 h 55 m
€147-338
GVA · 38 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 20 m
€109-165
LYS · 20 km
2 h 25 m
€156-181
1 stop
GVA · 38 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 30 m
€160-186
GVA · 38 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 20 m
€70-92
LYS · 20 km
1 h 25 m
€65-78
GVA · 38 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
6 h 25 m
€318-351
1 stop
GVA · 38 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 35 m
€446-565
1 stop
LYS · 20 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 111 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 38 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

MeasureLyonAnnecy
Official languageFrenchFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation160 m418 m
Main airportLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinationsGeneva International Airport (GVA)38 km from centre140 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLyonAnnecy
City population519,127132,117
People per km²10,8381,975
Museums within 10 km421
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre14844

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lyon or Annecy 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). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.