VacationSelector

Manchester or Zurich?

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

Your match

Manchester
✓ Best match
47
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Zurich
44
match

Wins on museums & heritage 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.

Scoreboard

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

ManchesterZurich
Beaches & swimming. Manchester leads by 28 points.28
ManchesterZurich
Score280
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1023
Coast distance27 km632 km
Water distance27 km
Places to eat. Manchester leads by 1 points.1
ManchesterZurich
Score6867
Restaurants within 2 km of centre853974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3530
Museums & heritage. Zurich leads by 14 points.14
ManchesterZurich
Score4256
Museums within 10 km2376
Museums within 2 km of centre1137
Share of museums within 2 km %4849
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Manchester leads by 8 points.8
ManchesterZurich
Score6254
Drinking venues within 4 km1,029676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre792553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7782
Nightclubs within 4 km8274
Nature & day trips. Zurich leads by 1 points.1
ManchesterZurich
Score3637
Protected land share 50 km %1716
Landscape blanket share 50 km %179
Land share of disc %99100
Park area within 2 km63 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Zurich leads by 4 points.4
ManchesterZurich
Score3236
Tourist attractions within 2 km58
Park area within 2 km63 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Zurich leads by 11 points.11
ManchesterZurich
Score4859
Notable places within 2 km61119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Manchester leads by 19 points.19
ManchesterZurich
Score5435
Price level global84.9110.5
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. Manchester leads by 1 points.1
ManchesterZurich
Score5453
Monthly daytime high7.2 °C to 20.8 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall51 mm to 95 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months00
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
Manchester
7
8
10
13
17
19
21
20
18
14
10
8
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Manchester
7
6
7
9
11
14
16
17
16
14
11
9
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Manchester
67
62
51
61
59
63
60
73
71
95
86
84
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Manchester
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Manchester
2
2
3
5
6
6
6
6
4
3
2
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. Manchester: 1991-2020 normals, Manchester Airport (14.8 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromManchesterZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
55 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 15 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 9 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 30 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
1 h 50 m
€84-103
ZRH · 9 km
BerlinBER
1 h 55 m
€352-493
2 stops
MAN · 15 km
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 9 km
MadridMAD
2 h 20 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 20 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
1 h 25 m
€174-215
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 40 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
2 h 40 m
€188-233
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 20 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
12 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
11 h 20 m
no fares
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 2026-09, 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

MeasureManchesterZurich
Official languageEnglishFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation38 m408 m
Main airportManchester Airport (MAN)15 km from centre210 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureManchesterZurich
City population547,627452,421
People per km²4,7375,147
Museums within 10 km2863
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre6378
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Manchester 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.