VacationSelector

Marseille or Zurich?

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

Your match

Marseille
✓ Best match
57
match

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

Zurich
44
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nightlife 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.

MarseilleZurich
Beaches & swimming. Marseille leads by 67 points.67
MarseilleZurich
Score670
Swim season months20
Beaches 10 km6423
Coast distance0 km632 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Marseille leads by 8 points.8
MarseilleZurich
Score7567
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,320974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3930
Museums & heritage. Zurich leads by 6 points.6
MarseilleZurich
Score5056
Museums within 10 km3376
Museums within 2 km of centre2337
Share of museums within 2 km %7049
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Zurich leads by 6 points.6
MarseilleZurich
Score4854
Drinking venues within 4 km544676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre454553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8382
Nightclubs within 4 km3074
Nature & day trips. Marseille and Zurich are level on 37.
MarseilleZurich
Score3737
Protected land share 50 km %1516
Landscape blanket share 50 km %139
Land share of disc %56100
Park area within 2 km25 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Marseille leads by 8 points.8
MarseilleZurich
Score4436
Tourist attractions within 2 km178
Park area within 2 km25 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km42
Sights concentration. Zurich leads by 1 points.1
MarseilleZurich
Score5859
Notable places within 2 km111119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Marseille leads by 27 points.27
MarseilleZurich
Score6235
Price level global73.7110.5
Daily budget€160€248
Year-round weather. Marseille leads by 22 points.22
MarseilleZurich
Score7553
Monthly daytime high11.8 °C to 30.7 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall11 mm to 82 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months60
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
Marseille
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
30
26
21
16
12
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Marseille
13
13
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
19
17
15
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Marseille
47
30
29
51
38
28
11
26
82
72
76
41
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Marseille
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Marseille
5
6
8
8
10
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
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. Marseille: 1991-2020 normals, Marseille / Marignane (20.6 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMarseilleZurich
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 25 m
€110-119
MRS · 21 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 50 m
€65-134
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 55 m
€219-245
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
MadridMAD
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
2 h 40 m
€188-233
ZRH · 9 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 40 m
€86-123
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
10 h 55 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 2026-10, 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

MeasureMarseilleZurich
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
Elevation0 m408 m
Main airportMarseille Provence Airport (MRS)21 km from centre125 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureMarseilleZurich
City population886,040452,421
People per km²3,6835,147
Museums within 10 km2763
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre9378
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Marseille 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). 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.