VacationSelector

Rovinj or Zagreb?

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

Your match

Rovinj
35
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Zagreb
✓ Best match
47
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

The verdict

Choose Rovinj if the trip is about the water: 55 beaches within reach and a sea that stays swimmable from June into September, in a town you can walk end to end.

Choose Zagreb if you want the days filled on land: far more to see within walking distance of the centre, a wider spread of restaurants and kitchens, and drinking and clubbing on a different scale.

Scoreboard

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

RovinjZagreb
Beaches & swimming. Rovinj leads by 73 points.73
RovinjZagreb
Score730
Swim season months40
Beaches 10 km558
Coast distance1 km117 km
Water distance1 km—
Places to eat. Zagreb leads by 25 points.25
RovinjZagreb
Score2752
Restaurants within 2 km of centre130374
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1427
Museums & heritage. Zagreb leads by 17 points.17
RovinjZagreb
Score2845
Museums within 10 km541
Museums within 2 km of centre440
Share of museums within 2 km %8098
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Zagreb leads by 52 points.52
RovinjZagreb
Score961
Drinking venues within 4 km751,009
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre66571
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8857
Nightclubs within 4 km563
Nature & day trips. Zagreb leads by 24 points.24
RovinjZagreb
Score1034
Protected land share 50 km %29
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %38100
Park area within 2 km8 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. Zagreb leads by 9 points.9
RovinjZagreb
Score1928
Tourist attractions within 2 km67
Park area within 2 km8 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km30
Sights concentration. Zagreb leads by 60 points.60
RovinjZagreb
Score060
Notable places within 2 km2122
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rovinj and Zagreb are level on 80.
RovinjZagreb
Score8080
Price level global48.548.5
Daily budget€138€138
Year-round weather. Rovinj leads by 3 points.3
RovinjZagreb
Score6562
Monthly daytime high8.8 °C to 29.1 °C5.4 °C to 28.5 °C
Monthly rainfall51 mm to 125 mm47 mm to 104 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Rovinj is the swimming trip: 55 beaches nearby against Zagreb's 8, and four months with the sea warm enough to stay in. It also has 3 theme parks within reach and a UNESCO-listed site within day-trip distance, which Zagreb has not.

Zagreb has many times more notable places within walking distance of the centre, about three times as many restaurants near it and a far wider range of kitchens, and many more bars and clubs, about half of them central. Protected land nearby covers 9% against 2%.

Where they are alike

Their weather runs close over the year. Both reach 29°C in July and stay warm through August, and neither has a dry month: rainfall never drops below about 47mm, even in midwinter.

Heritage and family appeal separate them less. Each has museums and old buildings, Zagreb's collection larger, Rovinj's UNESCO site within day-trip reach, and neither offers children much beyond a modest set of attractions and parks.

Which traveller are you?

A traveller whose trip is built round swimming should take Rovinj: 55 beaches nearby and sea at 26°C by August, where Zagreb has barely any swimming and no month of warm water.

Someone after eating out and late nights wants Zagreb: about three times as many restaurants near the centre, a wider range of kitchens, many more bars and clubs, and a dense core of sights to walk between.

Families split. Zagreb has more park space and somewhat more attractions near the centre; Rovinj answers with 3 theme parks within reach and warm sea, which settles it if the children swim.

What the numbers don't tell you

Treat the value comparison as empty. Both cities carry the same national price level, so that axis is identical by construction and tells you nothing about which is cheaper on the ground. The €138 daily budget beside it is one national estimate, not a measurement of either place, so do not read it as a trait of Rovinj or Zagreb.

And warm does not mean dry. Rovinj's best swimming month, September, is also among its wettest, and Zagreb's summer is its rainiest stretch. Rovinj's peak months also concentrate visitors on a town of 13,000 people, which the beach count does not show.

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
Rovinj
9
10
14
18
22
27
29
29
24
19
14
10
Zagreb
5
8
13
18
23
27
29
28
22
17
11
6
Sea temperature, °C
Rovinj
11
10
11
13
18
22
25
26
23
20
17
14
Zagreb
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Rovinj
51
59
56
74
90
73
61
78
114
113
125
88
Zagreb
47
48
49
63
76
90
87
85
104
91
88
63
Daylight, hours per day
Rovinj
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zagreb
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Rovinj
3
4
5
6
8
9
10
9
7
5
3
3
Zagreb
2
4
5
6
8
9
9
9
6
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Rovinj: 1991-2020 normals, Trieste (63.7 km from centre). Zagreb: 1991-2020 normals, Zagreb / Gric (0.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Rovinj's window is June to September, with highs of 27-29°C and sea of 22-26°C, warmest at the end. Its autumn is wet, over 110mm a month, so the swimming season closes damp.

Zagreb reads better from May to August, at 23-29°C, though high summer is its rainiest stretch at 85-90mm a month. Its driest months are the winter ones, under 50mm, but highs then are only 5-13°C, so dry and comfortable do not coincide.

Getting there

Flying fromRovinjZagreb
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 45 m
€190-215
1 stop
VCE · 111 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
MadridMAD
2 h 20 m
€102-159
VCE · 111 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
MunichMUC
1 h 5 m
€268-289
VCE · 111 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 10 m
€65-121
VCE · 111 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 10 m
no fares
TRS · 84 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 30 m
no fares
PUY · 31 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
no fares
PUY · 31 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 15 m
no fares
TRS · 84 km
2 h 0 m
€153-254
ZAG · 11 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 55 m
€366-421
2 stops
VCE · 111 km
5 h 35 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
8 h 45 m
no fares
VCE · 111 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 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 2026-09 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

MeasureRovinjZagreb
Official languageCroatianCroatian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m127 m
Main airportPula Airport (PUY)31 km from centre34 non-stop destinationsZagreb Franjo Tuđman International Airport (ZAG)11 km from centre60 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureRovinjZagreb
City population12,968767,131
Museums within 10 km127
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre2242
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months–

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Rovinj or Zagreb 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. 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. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.