VacationSelector

Riga or Zurich?

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

Your match

Riga
✓ Best match
53
match

Wins on value for money and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Zurich
44
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife 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.

RigaZurich
Beaches & swimming. Riga leads by 40 points.40
RigaZurich
Score400
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km5723
Coast distance12 km632 km
Water distance12 km
Places to eat. Zurich leads by 8 points.8
RigaZurich
Score5967
Restaurants within 2 km of centre470974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3330
Museums & heritage. Riga leads by 5 points.5
RigaZurich
Score6156
Museums within 10 km6976
Museums within 2 km of centre4737
Share of museums within 2 km %6849
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Zurich leads by 3 points.3
RigaZurich
Score5154
Drinking venues within 4 km584676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre456553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7882
Nightclubs within 4 km5474
Nature & day trips. Riga leads by 7 points.7
RigaZurich
Score4437
Protected land share 50 km %1016
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %73100
Park area within 2 km68 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Zurich leads by 1 points.1
RigaZurich
Score3536
Tourist attractions within 2 km78
Park area within 2 km68 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Riga leads by 3 points.3
RigaZurich
Score6259
Notable places within 2 km137119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Riga leads by 41 points.41
RigaZurich
Score7635
Price level global53.7110.5
Daily budget€132€248
Year-round weather. Zurich leads by 1 points.1
RigaZurich
Score5253
Monthly daytime high-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall33 mm to 87 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
Riga
0
0
4
12
17
21
24
22
17
11
5
1
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Riga
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. Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRigaZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
BerlinBER
1 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 0 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
1 h 25 m
€174-215
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 25 m
€207-228
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 45 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 9 km
OsloOSL, TRF
1 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
HelsinkiHEL
1 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 45 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
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

MeasureRigaZurich
Official languageLatvianFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation6 m408 m
Main airportRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days

By the numbers

MeasureRigaZurich
City population588,911452,421
People per km²5,147
Museums within 10 km1263
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre5578
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Riga 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. 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. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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.