VacationSelector

Lyon or Strasbourg?

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 good for families with your weighting.

Strasbourg
47
match

Wins on nature & day trips and sights concentration 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 Lyon if you want the larger city's range: more places to eat and drink near the centre, more museums, and more to occupy children, with summer highs around 28°C.

Choose Strasbourg if you would rather walk a compact centre and reach open country quickly, with 37% of the land around it protected and drier winter and spring months.

Scoreboard

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

LyonStrasbourg
Beaches & swimming. Lyon and Strasbourg are level on 0.
LyonStrasbourg
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km269
Coast distance253 km398 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Lyon leads by 12 points.12
LyonStrasbourg
Score7967
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,691780
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4036
Museums & heritage. Lyon leads by 14 points.14
LyonStrasbourg
Score5541
Museums within 10 km5323
Museums within 2 km of centre2514
Share of museums within 2 km %4761
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Lyon leads by 22 points.22
LyonStrasbourg
Score5836
Drinking venues within 4 km866305
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre611264
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7187
Nightclubs within 4 km4717
Nature & day trips. Strasbourg leads by 21 points.21
LyonStrasbourg
Score3354
Protected land share 50 km %637
Landscape blanket share 50 km %635
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km120 hectares71 hectares
Good for families. Lyon leads by 21 points.21
LyonStrasbourg
Score5938
Tourist attractions within 2 km259
Park area within 2 km120 hectares71 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Strasbourg leads by 4 points.4
LyonStrasbourg
Score5458
Notable places within 2 km86109
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lyon and Strasbourg are level on 62.
LyonStrasbourg
Score6262
Price level global73.773.7
Daily budget€160€160
Year-round weather. Lyon leads by 1 points.1
LyonStrasbourg
Score6463
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 28 °C5.2 °C to 26.4 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 101 mm34 mm to 77 mm
Dry months03
0255075100

Where they differ

Lyon is the bigger night out, with about three times as many bars and nightclubs, most near the centre. It also has roughly twice as many restaurants and twice as many museums, and more for families: about three times as many attractions near the centre, twice as much park space, and 2 theme parks within reach against 1.

Strasbourg trades that for open country, with 37% of the land around it protected against 6% around Lyon, and a centre that packs somewhat more notable places into walking distance.

Where they are alike

Neither city is a place to swim. Both are inland, and neither has a month with sea at 21°C or more, so the water is not part of the trip either way.

Their years also run in step: January highs of 7°C in Lyon and 5°C in Strasbourg, July highs of 28°C and 26°C, and the same summer peak. Both are also walkable, with the notable places, bars and museums clustered close to the middle.

Which traveller are you?

Eating and drinking out: Lyon. It has about twice as many restaurants near the centre and roughly three times as many bars and clubs, so evenings need less planning and less travel between places.

Travelling with children: Lyon again, with about three times as many attractions near the centre, twice as much park space and 2 theme parks within reach against Strasbourg's 1.

Walking and countryside: Strasbourg. Its centre holds somewhat more notable places within walking distance, and 37% of the land around it is protected, so a day out of town needs little distance.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value comparison between these two carries no information. That figure is a national price level, identical for both by construction, and the €160 daily budget beside it is a single national estimate rather than a measurement of either city.

Strasbourg's share of protected land, 37%, describes the country around the city, not the city itself: Lyon has about twice as much park space near its centre, so the greener day in town is likelier in Lyon, and Strasbourg's advantage needs a trip out. September, still one of Lyon's better months, is also among its wettest at 84mm.

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
Strasbourg
5
7
12
17
21
24
26
26
22
16
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Strasbourg
35
34
39
42
77
68
72
61
55
59
47
45
Daylight, hours per day
Lyon
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Strasbourg
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
6
4
3
2
Strasbourg
2
3
5
6
7
7
8
7
6
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre). Strasbourg: 1991-2020 normals, Strasbourg (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Lyon is the stronger summer city: highs of 26-28°C from June to August and 23°C in September, though October brings 101mm of rain.

Strasbourg is the better call earlier in the year. April is warm at 17°C with 42mm against Lyon's 68mm, and January to March stay at 34-39mm where Lyon has none of its months under 40mm. Summer there is a little cooler, 24-26°C, and August is drier at 61mm.

Getting there

Flying fromLyonStrasbourg
PalmaPMI
1 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
FKB · 33 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SXB · 10 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 15 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
SXB · 10 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
STR · 109 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€167-217
LYS · 20 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
SXB · 10 km
ToulouseTLS
1 h 5 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
SXB · 10 km
NantesNTE
1 h 20 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
SXB · 10 km
NiceNCE
1 h 0 m
€178-215
1 stop
LYS · 20 km
1 h 20 m
€81-198
SXB · 10 km
TunisTUN
1 h 55 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
SXB · 10 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 35 m
€446-565
1 stop
LYS · 20 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
ZRH · 137 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

MeasureLyonStrasbourg
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 m132 m
Main airportLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinationsStrasbourg Airport (SXB)10 km from centre42 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLyonStrasbourg
City population519,127293,771
People per km²10,8383,752
Museums within 10 km4221
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre14887

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lyon or Strasbourg 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 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.