VacationSelector

Portland or Zurich?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Portland
42
match

Wins on year-round weather and value for money with your weighting.

Zurich
44
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage 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.

PortlandZurich
Beaches & swimming. Portland and Zurich are level on 0.
PortlandZurich
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km2723
Coast distance69 km632 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Portland leads by 7 points.7
PortlandZurich
Score7467
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,011974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4430
Museums & heritage. Zurich leads by 21 points.21
PortlandZurich
Score3556
Museums within 10 km2376
Museums within 2 km of centre1537
Share of museums within 2 km %6549
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Portland leads by 4 points.4
PortlandZurich
Score5854
Drinking venues within 4 km942676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre518553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5582
Nightclubs within 4 km3274
Nature & day trips. Zurich leads by 2 points.2
PortlandZurich
Score3537
Protected land share 50 km %1316
Landscape blanket share 50 km %39
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km37 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Zurich leads by 2 points.2
PortlandZurich
Score3436
Tourist attractions within 2 km88
Park area within 2 km37 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Zurich leads by 24 points.24
PortlandZurich
Score3559
Notable places within 2 km29119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Portland leads by 8 points.8
PortlandZurich
Score4335
Price level global100110.5
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. Portland leads by 12 points.12
PortlandZurich
Score6553
Monthly daytime high7.9 °C to 27.7 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall13 mm to 145 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months30
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
Portland
8
11
13
16
20
23
27
28
25
18
12
8
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Rainfall, mm
Portland
128
94
101
75
65
41
13
14
39
87
138
145
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Portland
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Portland
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. Portland: 1991-2020 normals, Portland International Airport (9.8 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromPortlandZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
9 h 55 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
2 h 15 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
11 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 20 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 55 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
10 h 5 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
San FranciscoSFO
1 h 45 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
10 h 30 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
MiamiMIA, OPF
5 h 45 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 45 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
10 h 35 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
Las VegasLAS
2 h 5 m
€173-370
PDX · 10 km
11 h 25 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 2026-09, 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

MeasurePortlandZurich
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation152 m408 m
Main airportPortland International Airport (PDX)10 km from centre87 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasurePortlandZurich
City population652,503452,421
People per km²1,7365,147
Museums within 10 km1763
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre8278

Where else could you go?

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