VacationSelector

Paris or Zurich?

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

Your match

Paris
✓ Best match
67
match

Wins on good for families and sights concentration 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.

The verdict

Choose Paris if you want museums, restaurants and nights out packed into one walkable centre, with warmer days, highs of 8-26°C across the year, and more to keep children occupied.

Choose Zurich if you want a smaller city where the drinking and the lake bathing, 23 beaches nearby, sit close to the centre, and you are content with a cooler, quieter year.

Scoreboard

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

ParisZurich
Beaches & swimming. Paris and Zurich are level on 0.
ParisZurich
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km223
Coast distance149 km632 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Paris leads by 23 points.23
ParisZurich
Score9067
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4,732974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3330
Museums & heritage. Paris leads by 20 points.20
ParisZurich
Score7656
Museums within 10 km18576
Museums within 2 km of centre6537
Share of museums within 2 km %3549
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Paris leads by 34 points.34
ParisZurich
Score8854
Drinking venues within 4 km3,796676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,694553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4582
Nightclubs within 4 km20174
Nature & day trips. Paris leads by 11 points.11
ParisZurich
Score4837
Protected land share 50 km %2816
Landscape blanket share 50 km %269
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km82 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Paris leads by 39 points.39
ParisZurich
Score7536
Tourist attractions within 2 km898
Park area within 2 km82 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Paris leads by 35 points.35
ParisZurich
Score9459
Notable places within 2 km865119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Paris leads by 27 points.27
ParisZurich
Score6235
Price level global73.7110.5
Daily budget€160€248
Year-round weather. Paris leads by 13 points.13
ParisZurich
Score6653
Monthly daytime high7.8 °C to 26 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 75 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months10
0255075100

Where they differ

Many times as many notable places sit within walking distance of Paris's centre, so a day on foot covers more ground. It has many times as many places to drink and about three times as many nightclubs. For families, there are many times as many attractions near the centre, twice the park space, and 3 theme parks within reach against 2.

Zurich's edge is water and compactness: 23 beaches nearby against Paris's 2, lake bathing rather than sea, with most bars and clubs near the centre.

Where they are alike

Neither is a swimming destination. Both sit inland, and neither has a month with sea at 21°C or more, so any bathing is lake or river.

They also share the shape of the year: summers peaking at 26°C and 24°C, cold winters and rain in every month. Both have protected countryside within day-trip reach, 28% of the land around Paris and 16% around Zurich, and museums for wet days.

Which traveller are you?

Someone travelling for the eating and the nights out should take Paris: many times as many restaurants near the centre and many times as many places to drink, with about three times as many nightclubs.

Families are better served in Paris too, with many times as many attractions near the centre, twice the park space, and 3 theme parks within reach against Zurich's 2.

A traveller after lake water and short evenings on foot should take Zurich: 23 beaches nearby against Paris's 2, and most of its bars and clubs sit near the centre, so nights need little travel.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget, €160 for France against €248 for Switzerland, is a national price level for restaurants and hotels, not a measurement of either city. A capital or a heavily visited city can sit far from its own country average, by more than the gap between these two figures.

No station near Paris records sunshine hours, so that figure is missing rather than low and that side of the weather comparison is unmeasured. What remains is temperature and rainfall, and Zurich's warmest months are also among its wettest, near 126mm, so a strong summer month there is not a dry one.

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
Paris
8
9
13
17
20
24
26
26
22
17
11
8
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Rainfall, mm
Paris
45
38
41
45
75
51
58
54
51
55
54
62
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Paris
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Paris
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. Paris: 1991-2020 normals, Paris-Montsouris (4.6 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Paris is the stronger pick from June to September, with highs of 24-26°C and rainfall near 51-58mm. May is its wettest month at 75mm, so a late-spring trip can be caught out.

Zurich's warmest stretch, July and August at 24°C, is also among its wettest, around 126mm a month. September is the drier end of its warm season, at 19°C and 87mm. Winters are colder there throughout, so the usable window is shorter.

Getting there

Flying fromParisZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€63-103
CDG · 22 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 30 m
€579-648
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
MadridMAD
1 h 55 m
€107-141
ORY · 14 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 15 m
€152-378
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 9 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 20 m
€138-242
ORY · 14 km
2 h 40 m
€188-233
ZRH · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€110-135
CDG · 22 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 10 m
€188-212
CDG · 22 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 50 m
€292-389
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
11 h 45 m
€806-1124
CDG · 22 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 45 m
no fares
CDG · 22 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

MeasureParisZurich
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
Elevation27 m408 m
Main airportCharles de Gaulle International Airport (CDG)22 km from centre277 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureParisZurich
City population2,103,778452,421
People per km²19,9605,147
Museums within 10 km25163
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre16978

Where else could you go?

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