VacationSelector

Oslo or Zurich?

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

Your match

Oslo
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Zurich
44
match

Wins on museums & heritage and year-round weather 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.

OsloZurich
Beaches & swimming. Oslo leads by 60 points.60
OsloZurich
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km16323
Coast distance1 km632 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Oslo and Zurich are level on 67.
OsloZurich
Score6767
Restaurants within 2 km of centre853974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3430
Museums & heritage. Zurich leads by 8 points.8
OsloZurich
Score4856
Museums within 10 km7076
Museums within 2 km of centre3737
Share of museums within 2 km %5349
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Zurich leads by 1 points.1
OsloZurich
Score5354
Drinking venues within 4 km695676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre562553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8182
Nightclubs within 4 km4174
Nature & day trips. Oslo leads by 24 points.24
OsloZurich
Score6137
Protected land share 50 km %2216
Landscape blanket share 50 km %19
Land share of disc %94100
Park area within 2 km88 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Oslo leads by 12 points.12
OsloZurich
Score4836
Tourist attractions within 2 km138
Park area within 2 km88 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Oslo leads by 10 points.10
OsloZurich
Score6959
Notable places within 2 km207119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Oslo leads by 19 points.19
OsloZurich
Score5435
Price level global85.1110.5
Daily budget€203€248
Year-round weather. Zurich leads by 5 points.5
OsloZurich
Score4853
Monthly daytime high0.1 °C to 22.7 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall40 mm to 104 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
Oslo
0
1
5
11
17
20
23
21
16
10
4
1
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Oslo
4
3
3
6
11
15
18
18
15
12
9
6
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Oslo
58
46
40
48
60
80
86
104
81
94
84
54
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Oslo
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Oslo
2
3
5
6
8
8
8
7
5
3
2
1
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. Oslo: 1991-2020 normals, Oslo-Blindern (4.3 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromOsloZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 5 m
€46-96
OSL · 37 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 15 m
€92-109
OSL · 37 km
1 h 45 m
€204-248
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 5 m
€83-98
OSL · 37 km
2 h 25 m
€207-228
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
€162-207
OSL · 37 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 30 m
€213-241
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 15 m
€145-204
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
€163-249
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€406
OSL · 37 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 40 m
no fares
OSL · 37 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
10 h 50 m
no fares
OSL · 37 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 2026-10, 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

MeasureOsloZurich
Official languageNorwegian, Nynorsk, Bokmål, SámiFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyNorwegian Krone (NOK)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 112, ambulance 113, fire 110112
Elevation23 m408 m
Main airportOslo-Gardermoen International Airport (OSL)37 km from centre58 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureOsloZurich
City population717,710452,421
People per km²5,147
Museums within 10 km6063
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre7578
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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