VacationSelector

Lyon or Zurich?

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 value for money and good for families with your weighting.

Zurich
44
match

Wins on sights concentration and 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 Lyon if you are travelling with children or plan to eat well: more attractions and park space near the centre, about twice as many restaurants, and warmer summers at 28°C.

Choose Zurich if museums, a walkable core of notable places and protected countryside for day trips matter more than warmth or a wide choice of kitchens.

Scoreboard

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

LyonZurich
Beaches & swimming. Lyon and Zurich are level on 0.
LyonZurich
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km2623
Coast distance253 km632 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Lyon leads by 12 points.12
LyonZurich
Score7967
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,691974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4030
Museums & heritage. Zurich leads by 1 points.1
LyonZurich
Score5556
Museums within 10 km5376
Museums within 2 km of centre2537
Share of museums within 2 km %4749
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Lyon leads by 4 points.4
LyonZurich
Score5854
Drinking venues within 4 km866676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre611553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7182
Nightclubs within 4 km4774
Nature & day trips. Zurich leads by 4 points.4
LyonZurich
Score3337
Protected land share 50 km %616
Landscape blanket share 50 km %69
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km120 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Lyon leads by 23 points.23
LyonZurich
Score5936
Tourist attractions within 2 km258
Park area within 2 km120 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Zurich leads by 5 points.5
LyonZurich
Score5459
Notable places within 2 km86119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lyon leads by 27 points.27
LyonZurich
Score6235
Price level global73.7110.5
Daily budget€160€248
Year-round weather. Lyon leads by 11 points.11
LyonZurich
Score6453
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 28 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 101 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Lyon has about twice as many restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens. For families it is the easier city: roughly three times as many attractions and park space close in, though both have 2 theme parks within reach. It also runs warmer, 7-28°C across the year against 4-24°C. The national price estimate for France is €160 a day against Switzerland's €248.

Zurich has more museums, more notable places within walking distance of the centre, twice as many nightclubs, and 16% protected land around it against Lyon's 6%.

Where they are alike

Neither is a swimming destination. Both have bathing spots nearby, 26 beaches around Lyon and 23 around Zurich, but neither has a month with water at 21°C or more, so swimming is incidental here.

Museums come out close: Zurich has somewhat more, while Lyon has 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Zurich's 1. Nightlife splits rather than separates: Lyon has more places to drink, Zurich twice as many nightclubs, and in both they sit near the centre.

Which traveller are you?

Families with young children: Lyon. Three times as many attractions and park space near the centre keep days short and simple, and both cities have 2 theme parks within reach for one bigger outing.

Eating and drinking: Lyon again, with about twice as many restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens. If your evenings run to clubs rather than bars, Zurich has roughly twice as many.

Walkers and museum-goers: Zurich. More notable places sit within walking distance of the centre, museum choice is a little wider, and 16% of the surrounding land is protected for days out, against 6% around Lyon.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures are national price levels for France and Switzerland, €160 and €248, not measurements of Lyon or Zurich. A capital or a heavily visited city can sit far from its own country's average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so treat them as background rather than as what your trip will cost.

The other trap is summer. Both cities take their heaviest rain in the months that otherwise suit them best: Zurich's early summer runs near 126mm a month, and Lyon's mild autumn brings 101mm. Neither has a genuinely dry month, so pack for rain whenever you go.

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
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Rainfall, mm
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Lyon
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
6
4
3
2
Zurich
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
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). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Lyon suits June to September, when daytime highs run 26-28°C and monthly rain sits at 66-84mm, so days outdoors are dependable. May, at 21°C, is milder for walking the city. October is its wettest month at 101mm.

Zurich is warmest in July and August at 24°C, but its early summer carries the heavier rain, near 126mm a month, well above Lyon at the same time. September, at 19°C, is the steadier choice for day trips and walking.

Getting there

Flying fromLyonZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€167-217
LYS · 20 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 20 m
€109-165
LYS · 20 km
2 h 40 m
€188-233
ZRH · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 20 m
€70-92
LYS · 20 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 9 km
MadridMAD
1 h 45 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 20 m
€195-211
2 stops
LYS · 20 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 111 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 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

MeasureLyonZurich
Official languageFrenchFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation160 m408 m
Main airportLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureLyonZurich
City population519,127452,421
People per km²10,8385,147
Museums within 10 km4263
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre14878

Where else could you go?

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