VacationSelector

Philadelphia or Zurich?

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

Your match

Philadelphia
✓ Best match
51
match

Wins on good for families and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Zurich
44
match

Wins on 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.

PhiladelphiaZurich
Beaches & swimming. Philadelphia and Zurich are level on 0.
PhiladelphiaZurich
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km123
Coast distance13 km632 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Philadelphia leads by 10 points.10
PhiladelphiaZurich
Score7767
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,714974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3530
Museums & heritage. Philadelphia leads by 4 points.4
PhiladelphiaZurich
Score6056
Museums within 10 km8976
Museums within 2 km of centre4837
Share of museums within 2 km %5449
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Philadelphia leads by 5 points.5
PhiladelphiaZurich
Score5954
Drinking venues within 4 km930676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre575553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6282
Nightclubs within 4 km4174
Nature & day trips. Philadelphia leads by 12 points.12
PhiladelphiaZurich
Score4937
Protected land share 50 km %1416
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %89100
Park area within 2 km75 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Philadelphia leads by 17 points.17
PhiladelphiaZurich
Score5336
Tourist attractions within 2 km168
Park area within 2 km75 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km42
Sights concentration. Zurich leads by 5 points.5
PhiladelphiaZurich
Score5459
Notable places within 2 km88119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Philadelphia leads by 8 points.8
PhiladelphiaZurich
Score4335
Price level global100110.5
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. Philadelphia leads by 7 points.7
PhiladelphiaZurich
Score6053
Monthly daytime high5.2 °C to 31 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall69 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
Philadelphia
5
7
12
18
24
28
31
30
26
20
13
8
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Rainfall, mm
Philadelphia
79
69
101
88
86
103
111
109
112
88
74
101
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Philadelphia
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
Philadelphia
4
5
6
7
9
9
8
9
7
7
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. Philadelphia: 1991-2020 normals, Philadelphia International Airport (11.3 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromPhiladelphiaZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 20 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
1 h 55 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
TokyoHND, NRT
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 140 km
11 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
BerlinBER
8 h 15 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
10 h 10 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
7 h 45 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
MadridMAD
7 h 35 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
ViennaVIE
8 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
1 h 25 m
€174-215
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
13 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
9 h 40 m
no fares
JFK · 140 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

MeasurePhiladelphiaZurich
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
Elevation12 m408 m
Main airportPhiladelphia International Airport (PHL)11 km from centre128 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasurePhiladelphiaZurich
City population1,603,797452,421
People per km²4,3395,147
Museums within 10 km5463
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre7578

Where else could you go?

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