VacationSelector

Prague or Salzburg?

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

Your match

Prague
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration with your weighting.

Salzburg
42
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 Prague if you want the denser city: more places to eat and drink, more to see within walking distance of the centre, and more attractions and park space for children.

Choose Salzburg if you want a small city of 155,000 people as a base for heritage day trips, with 3 UNESCO-listed places within reach and 4 theme parks, and you accept heavier summer rain.

Scoreboard

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

PragueSalzburg
Beaches & swimming. Prague and Salzburg are level on 0.
PragueSalzburg
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km79
Coast distance10,000 km653 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Prague leads by 26 points.26
PragueSalzburg
Score7549
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,866348
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2923
Museums & heritage. Prague leads by 12 points.12
PragueSalzburg
Score7260
Museums within 10 km13842
Museums within 2 km of centre10027
Share of museums within 2 km %7264
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Prague leads by 41 points.41
PragueSalzburg
Score7736
Drinking venues within 4 km2,248294
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,457241
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6582
Nightclubs within 4 km12316
Nature & day trips. Prague leads by 18 points.18
PragueSalzburg
Score4527
Protected land share 50 km %126
Landscape blanket share 50 km %80
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km183 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Prague leads by 27 points.27
PragueSalzburg
Score7548
Tourist attractions within 2 km5417
Park area within 2 km183 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km34
Sights concentration. Prague leads by 30 points.30
PragueSalzburg
Score7646
Notable places within 2 km31054
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Prague leads by 16 points.16
PragueSalzburg
Score7559
Price level global55.276.9
Daily budget€107€160
Year-round weather. Prague leads by 7 points.7
PragueSalzburg
Score6154
Monthly daytime high2.2 °C to 25.3 °C3.4 °C to 24.9 °C
Monthly rainfall22 mm to 80 mm47 mm to 168 mm
Dry months70
0255075100

Where they differ

Prague has many times as many bars and clubs as Salzburg, most of them near the centre, and many times as many notable places within walking distance. There are about three times as many tourist attractions near the centre, far more park space, and many times as many restaurants across a somewhat wider range of kitchens.

Salzburg's advantages sit outside the centre: 4 theme parks within reach against Prague's 3, and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Prague's 1.

Where they are alike

Neither is a swimming destination. Both are inland, with no month of sea at 21°C or more; Salzburg has 9 beaches nearby and Prague 7, but these are breaks from the city rather than a coastal holiday.

Their weather runs in parallel: both reach 25°C in July and sit at 2-3°C in January. Both also carry real museum weight, Prague in numbers, Salzburg in listed sites within day-trip reach.

Which traveller are you?

Someone planning an evening out should take Prague. It has many times as many bars and clubs as Salzburg, and most of them sit near the centre, so a night needs no transport or planning.

Families are better served in Prague for day-to-day variety, with far more attractions near the centre and far more park space, though Salzburg has 4 theme parks within reach against Prague's 3.

Heritage travellers who like to move around will get more from Salzburg, with 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Prague's 1, although Prague has considerably more museums and more protected land nearby, 12% against 6%.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €107 for Czechia and €160 for Austria, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of Prague or Salzburg. A capital and a heavily visited small city can both sit well away from their own country's average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so treat them as background rather than a reason to pick either.

The warmest months are also the wettest in both, and more so in Salzburg, where no month drops to 40mm or less, so a warm month there is not a dry one. Salzburg's 9 nearby beaches do not add up to swimming weather.

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
Prague
2
5
9
16
20
23
25
25
20
14
7
3
Salzburg
3
6
10
16
20
23
25
25
20
15
8
4
Rainfall, mm
Prague
26
22
31
27
65
80
76
79
44
36
30
30
Salzburg
62
47
83
80
142
168
159
167
127
90
70
67
Daylight, hours per day
Prague
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Salzburg
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Prague
2
3
4
6
7
8
8
7
5
4
2
1
Salzburg
3
3
5
6
7
7
7
7
5
4
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Prague: 1991-2020 normals, Praha-Libus (8.1 km from centre). Salzburg: 1991-2020 normals, Salzburg (3.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Prague's best run is June to August, with highs of 23-25°C and rain near 80mm. The shoulder months are drier: April at 27mm, September at 44mm and October at 36mm.

Salzburg peaks at the same time, 25°C in July and August, but summer rain there runs 159-167mm and no month of the year falls to 40mm or less. Its driest stretch is January and February, at 47-62mm with highs of 3-6°C, which suits a winter visit more than a summer one.

Getting there

Flying fromPragueSalzburg
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€86-113
PRG · 12 km
1 h 30 m
€183-250
MUC · 112 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 15 m
€111-155
PRG · 12 km
1 h 55 m
€166-216
MUC · 112 km
MadridMAD
2 h 45 m
€146-195
1 stop
PRG · 12 km
2 h 25 m
€227-312
1 stop
MUC · 112 km
AthensATH
2 h 30 m
€132-140
PRG · 12 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 45 m
€62-97
PRG · 12 km
1 h 30 m
€141-202
MUC · 112 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 55 m
€63-104
1 stop
PRG · 12 km
1 h 55 m
€186-283
SZG · 3 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 20 m
no fares
PRG · 12 km
8 h 15 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
10 h 45 m
no fares
PRG · 12 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
HurghadaHRG
4 h 15 m
no fares
PRG · 12 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
SZG · 3 km
Punta CanaPUJ
10 h 0 m
no fares
PRG · 12 km
9 h 50 m
no fares
MUC · 112 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

MeasurePragueSalzburg
Official languageCzechGerman, Austrian Sign Language
CurrencyCzech Koruna (CZK)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation235 m424 m
Main airportVáclav Havel Airport Prague (PRG)12 km from centre175 non-stop destinationsSalzburg Airport (SZG)3 km from centre62 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasurePragueSalzburg
City population1,397,880155,021
People per km²2,8172,360
Museums within 10 km8838
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre8950

Where else could you go?

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