VacationSelector

Montpellier or Zurich?

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

Your match

Montpellier
✓ 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.

MontpellierZurich
Beaches & swimming. Montpellier leads by 32 points.32
MontpellierZurich
Score320
Swim season months20
Beaches 10 km823
Coast distance9 km632 km
Water distance9 km
Places to eat. Zurich leads by 2 points.2
MontpellierZurich
Score6567
Restaurants within 2 km of centre737974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3430
Museums & heritage. Zurich leads by 30 points.30
MontpellierZurich
Score2656
Museums within 10 km1476
Museums within 2 km of centre337
Share of museums within 2 km %2149
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Zurich leads by 16 points.16
MontpellierZurich
Score3854
Drinking venues within 4 km318676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre265553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8382
Nightclubs within 4 km2574
Nature & day trips. Montpellier leads by 6 points.6
MontpellierZurich
Score4337
Protected land share 50 km %1516
Landscape blanket share 50 km %109
Land share of disc %70100
Park area within 2 km55 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Montpellier leads by 8 points.8
MontpellierZurich
Score4436
Tourist attractions within 2 km88
Park area within 2 km55 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km72
Sights concentration. Zurich leads by 21 points.21
MontpellierZurich
Score3859
Notable places within 2 km35119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Montpellier leads by 27 points.27
MontpellierZurich
Score6235
Price level global73.7110.5
Daily budget€160€248
Year-round weather. Montpellier leads by 21 points.21
MontpellierZurich
Score7453
Monthly daytime high12 °C to 29.6 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall17 mm to 93 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months50
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
Montpellier
12
13
16
19
23
27
30
29
25
21
16
13
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Montpellier
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
Montpellier
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
10
8
6
5
5
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. Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMontpellierZurich
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
MadridMAD
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 109 km
2 h 40 m
€188-233
ZRH · 9 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
BSL · 81 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
BastiaBIA
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
SXB · 146 km
TunisTUN
1 h 40 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
SXB · 146 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 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 2026-09 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

MeasureMontpellierZurich
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
Elevation7 m408 m
Main airportMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureMontpellierZurich
City population310,240452,421
People per km²5,4525,147
Museums within 10 km1463
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre6578
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 Montpellier 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.