VacationSelector

Salzburg or Varanasi?

Two destinations compared in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

The old town below the fortress, Salzburg
Salzburg

Photo: Leonhard Niederwimmer, Pexels License

Rowing boats below the ghats in the morning light, Varanasi
Varanasi

Photo: Dennis G. Jarvis, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped

Your match

Salzburg
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on nature and the outdoors and families with your weighting.

Varanasi
40
match

Wins on prices and food and drink with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Our verdict on each category, scored 0 to 100 against fixed benchmark cities.

SalzburgVaranasi
Beaches & swimming. Salzburg leads by 31 points.31
Food & drink. Varanasi leads by 10 points.10
Culture & sights. Varanasi leads by 8 points.8
Nightlife. Salzburg leads by 15 points.15
Nature & outdoors. Salzburg leads by 68 points.68
Day trips. Salzburg leads by 38 points.38
Good for families. Salzburg leads by 60 points.60
Getting around. Salzburg leads by 44 points.44
Shopping & style. Varanasi leads by 7 points.7
Affordability. Varanasi leads by 60 points.60
Live music & performing arts. Salzburg leads by 22 points.22
Wellness & relaxation. Salzburg leads by 25 points.25
0255075100

What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Salzburg and Varanasi.

When should you go?

Pick the month you can travel and see both cities side by side. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Climate figures for July
JulySalzburgVaranasi
Daytime high25 °C35 °C
Night-time low14 °C27 °C
Rainfall in the month159 mm249 mm
Sunshine7 hours a dayNo figure
Daylight16 hours a day14 hours a day

The whole year

Each row is shaded against that destination’s own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that figure 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
Salzburg
3
6
10
16
20
23
25
25
20
15
8
4
Varanasi
24
29
35
41
43
41
35
33
32
32
28
24
Rainfall, mm
Salzburg
62
47
83
80
142
168
159
167
127
90
70
67
Varanasi
12
14
10
11
23
110
249
200
146
34
2
5
Daylight, hours per day
Salzburg
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Varanasi
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Sunshine, hours per day
Salzburg
3
3
5
6
7
7
7
7
5
4
3
2
Varanasi
No sunshine record

Where the figures come from

Varanasi has no weather station within reach, so its figures come from a gridded climate model rather than a measured record, and read a broad area rather than the city itself.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Salzburg: 1991-2020 normals, Salzburg (3.4 km from centre). Varanasi: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km.

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSalzburgVaranasi
MumbaiBOM, NMI
8 h 5 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
2 h 10 m
€147-164
VNS · 21 km
New DelhiDEL
7 h 35 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
1 h 25 m
€121-127
VNS · 21 km
BengaluruBLR
9 h 5 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
VNS · 21 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 0 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
3 h 20 m
€433-468
1 stop
VNS · 21 km
SharjahSHJ
6 h 0 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
3 h 55 m
€368-384
VNS · 21 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 2026-10 to 2026-12, 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

MeasureSalzburgVaranasi
Official languageGerman, Austrian Sign LanguageHindi, English
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Indian Rupee (INR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCM230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+5:30
Emergency number112108 or 112
Elevation424 m76 m
Main airportSalzburg Airport (SZG)3 km from centre64 non-stop destinationsLal Bahadur Shastri International Airport (VNS)21 km from centre16 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days-

By the numbers

MeasureSalzburgVaranasi
City population155,0211,198,491
People per km²2,36014,598
Museums within 10 km382
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Salzburg or Varanasi somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

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). 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. Temperature and rainfall for destinations with no weather station are from the NASA POWER 2001-2020 climatology, derived from MERRA-2. 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.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate and flight figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-10-27. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.