VacationSelector

New York or Zurich?

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

Your match

New York
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Zurich
44
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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.

New YorkZurich
Beaches & swimming. New York leads by 64 points.64
New YorkZurich
Score640
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km1723
Coast distance1 km632 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. New York leads by 28 points.28
New YorkZurich
Score9567
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6,032974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3830
Museums & heritage. New York leads by 4 points.4
New YorkZurich
Score6056
Museums within 10 km11976
Museums within 2 km of centre3137
Share of museums within 2 km %2649
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. New York leads by 35 points.35
New YorkZurich
Score8954
Drinking venues within 4 km4,159676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,015553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4882
Nightclubs within 4 km19274
Nature & day trips. New York leads by 2 points.2
New YorkZurich
Score3937
Protected land share 50 km %416
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %69100
Park area within 2 km134 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. New York leads by 36 points.36
New YorkZurich
Score7236
Tourist attractions within 2 km378
Park area within 2 km134 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km72
Sights concentration. New York leads by 15 points.15
New YorkZurich
Score7459
Notable places within 2 km268119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. New York leads by 8 points.8
New YorkZurich
Score4335
Price level global100110.5
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. New York leads by 5 points.5
New YorkZurich
Score5853
Monthly daytime high4.5 °C to 30.1 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall74 mm to 112 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
New York
5
6
10
16
22
27
30
29
25
19
13
7
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
New York
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
New York
No sunshine record
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. New York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromNew YorkZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€459-498
JFK · 21 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
MadridMAD
7 h 25 m
€474-553
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 5 m
€236-237
LGA · 13 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 30 m
€445-517
JFK · 21 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
7 h 55 m
€439-457
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
BerlinBER
8 h 15 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
10 h 5 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
13 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
TokyoHND, NRT
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 21 km
11 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
9 h 40 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
12 h 0 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

MeasureNew YorkZurich
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation25 m408 m
Main airportJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureNew YorkZurich
City population8,804,190452,421
People per km²7,2565,147
Museums within 10 km15763
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre13278
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow New York 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 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.