Lyon or Stuttgart?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Too close to call, 1 point apart
Wins on places to eat and good for families with your weighting.
Wins on nature & day trips 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.
The verdict
Choose Lyon if the trip is built around eating out, going for a drink and covering ground on foot: it has far more restaurants and bars near the centre, and more notable places within walking distance.
Choose Stuttgart if you want a base for walking and days out: just over half the surrounding land is protected, against a small fraction around Lyon, and it has slightly more museums.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Lyon and Stuttgart are level on 0.
| Lyon | Stuttgart | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 0 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 26 | 3 |
| Coast distance | 253 km | 476 km |
| Water distance | — | — |
Places to eat. Lyon leads by 20 points.20
| Lyon | Stuttgart | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 79 | 59 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 1,691 | 575 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 40 | 29 |
Museums & heritage. Stuttgart leads by 1 points.1
| Lyon | Stuttgart | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 55 | 56 |
| Museums within 10 km | 53 | 65 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 25 | 21 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 47 | 32 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 2 | 3 |
Nightlife. Lyon leads by 9 points.9
| Lyon | Stuttgart | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 58 | 49 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 866 | 524 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 611 | 374 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 71 | 71 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 47 | 53 |
Nature & day trips. Stuttgart leads by 47 points.47
| Lyon | Stuttgart | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 33 | 80 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 6 | 51 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 6 | 31 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 100 |
| Park area within 2 km | 120 hectares | 78 hectares |
Good for families. Lyon leads by 14 points.14
| Lyon | Stuttgart | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 59 | 45 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 25 | 11 |
| Park area within 2 km | 120 hectares | 78 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 2 | 2 |
Sights concentration. Lyon leads by 10 points.10
| Lyon | Stuttgart | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 54 | 44 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 86 | 50 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Lyon leads by 2 points.2
| Lyon | Stuttgart | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 62 | 60 |
| Price level global | 73.7 | 75.9 |
| Daily budget | €160 | €163 |
Year-round weather. Lyon leads by 1 points.1
| Lyon | Stuttgart | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 64 | 63 |
| Monthly daytime high | 7 °C to 28 °C | 5.6 °C to 25.9 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 43 mm to 101 mm | 33 mm to 79 mm |
| Dry months | 0 | 3 |
Where they differ
Lyon is the stronger city for eating and going out: about three times as many restaurants near the centre, a wider range of kitchens and roughly twice as many bars. It also puts about twice as many notable places, attractions and park space within walking distance.
Stuttgart's advantage lies outside the streets: 51% of the surrounding land is protected against 6% around Lyon, so open country is within easy reach. It also has somewhat more museums and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip range against Lyon's 2.
Where they are alike
Seasonally the two ask for the same packing. Lyon runs slightly warmer, with daytime highs of 7-28°C across the year against Stuttgart's 6-26°C, but both are properly cold in January and warm by July.
Their museum offering is comparable too, with UNESCO-listed sites reachable from either as a day trip, and the national daily budgets behind them sit close, €160 and €163. Neither is a swimming destination: no month brings sea at 21°C or more.
Which traveller are you?
Someone travelling to eat and drink well should take Lyon: far more restaurants near the centre, a wider spread of kitchens and about twice as many bars, most of them close enough to walk between.
A walker who wants countryside on the doorstep should take Stuttgart: 51% of the land around it is protected against 6% around Lyon, and it has slightly more museums and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach.
Families are better served in Lyon, with about twice as many attractions and twice as much park space near the centre; both cities have 2 theme parks within reach, so that is not the deciding factor.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €160 and €163, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels, not measurements of either city. A heavily visited city can sit far from its country's average, by more than the gap between these two, so read them as country context, not a reason to choose.
A nearby count can also mislead: Lyon has 26 beaches within reach, but neither city has a month with sea at 21°C or more, so swimming is not what they are for. And Stuttgart's driest months are its coldest, so the drier half of the year is also the least comfortable outdoors.
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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre). Stuttgart: 1991-2020 normals, Stuttgart / Neckartal (2.8 km from centre).
Lyon's window is June to September: highs of 26-28°C at the peak and 23°C at the end of it, with 66-84mm of rain through those months, so warmth and showers arrive together. October is the wettest month at 101mm.
Stuttgart tops out lower, at 26°C in high summer, and its wettest stretch falls there too, near 79mm. Its edge is the drier first half of the year, 33-43mm from February to April, where Lyon has no month that dry.
Getting there
| Flying from | Lyon | Stuttgart |
|---|---|---|
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 3 h 0 m €167-217 LYS · 20 km | 2 h 40 m €139-291 STR · 10 km |
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 1 h 35 m no fares LYS · 20 km | 1 h 35 m no fares STR · 10 km |
| PalmaPMI | 1 h 30 m no fares LYS · 20 km | 2 h 0 m no fares STR · 10 km |
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 10 m no fares LYS · 20 km | 1 h 15 m no fares STR · 10 km |
| BarcelonaBCN | 1 h 20 m €70-92 LYS · 20 km | 1 h 50 m €111-165 STR · 10 km |
| AntalyaAYT | 3 h 25 m no fares LYS · 20 km | 3 h 15 m €194-322 1 stop STR · 10 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 1 h 20 m €195-211 2 stops LYS · 20 km | 50 m no fares STR · 10 km |
| TunisTUN | 1 h 55 m no fares LYS · 20 km | 2 h 15 m no fares SXB · 117 km |
| MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX | 7 h 35 m €446-565 1 stop LYS · 20 km | 7 h 35 m no fares FRA · 146 km |
| BeijingPEK, PKX | 10 h 20 m no fares GVA · 111 km | 9 h 50 m €683-756 FRA · 146 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
| Measure | Lyon | Stuttgart |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | French | German |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CE230 V, 50 Hz | CF230 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 112 |
| Elevation | 160 m | 245 m |
| Main airport | Lyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinations | Stuttgart Airport (STR)10 km from centre121 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 11 days | 12 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Lyon | Stuttgart |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 519,127 | 633,484 |
| People per km² | 10,838 | 3,054 |
| Museums within 10 km | 42 | 42 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 2 | 3 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 148 | 59 |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lyon or Stuttgart somewhere new.