VacationSelector

Salzburg or Vienna?

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

Your match

Salzburg
42
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

Vienna
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration 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 Salzburg if you want a small city you can cross on foot, where the museums, bars and notable buildings cluster tightly around the centre and the surrounding land is more protected.

Choose Vienna if you want range: many times more restaurants, museums and places to drink, about three times as many attractions near the centre for families, and warmer summers reaching 27°C.

Scoreboard

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

SalzburgVienna
Beaches & swimming. Salzburg and Vienna are level on 0.
SalzburgVienna
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km922
Coast distance653 km10,000 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Vienna leads by 28 points.28
SalzburgVienna
Score4977
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3481,617
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2337
Museums & heritage. Vienna leads by 21 points.21
SalzburgVienna
Score6081
Museums within 10 km42192
Museums within 2 km of centre27110
Share of museums within 2 km %6457
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Vienna leads by 38 points.38
SalzburgVienna
Score3674
Drinking venues within 4 km2941,948
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2411,089
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8256
Nightclubs within 4 km16108
Nature & day trips. Vienna leads by 5 points.5
SalzburgVienna
Score2732
Protected land share 50 km %64
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km39 hectares93 hectares
Good for families. Vienna leads by 21 points.21
SalzburgVienna
Score4869
Tourist attractions within 2 km1746
Park area within 2 km39 hectares93 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km44
Sights concentration. Vienna leads by 29 points.29
SalzburgVienna
Score4675
Notable places within 2 km54287
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Salzburg and Vienna are level on 59.
SalzburgVienna
Score5959
Price level global76.976.9
Daily budget€160€160
Year-round weather. Vienna leads by 7 points.7
SalzburgVienna
Score5461
Monthly daytime high3.4 °C to 24.9 °C3.3 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 168 mm38 mm to 80 mm
Dry months01
0255075100

Where they differ

Salzburg keeps things close. Its bars and clubs are few but nearly all sit near the centre, and its museums cluster tightly around the old core, so a day on foot covers most of it. Protected land around the city runs 6% against Vienna's 4%.

Vienna offers many times as many restaurants and a much wider spread of kitchens, many times as many notable buildings within walking distance of the centre, and many times as many bars and clubs, though only about half are central.

Where they are alike

Neither city is a swimming trip. Vienna has 22 beaches within reach against Salzburg's 9, but neither gets a month with water at 21°C or more, so a swim is incidental rather than a reason to go.

Both are city breaks rather than countryside bases, with only a thin share of protected land around them, and they share a climate: January highs near 3°C, July the warmest month in each, and similar daytime highs through the year.

Which traveller are you?

Museum-led travellers: Vienna has many times as many, and each city has 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach. Salzburg's advantage is compactness, its collections sit tightly around the centre, so a weekend needs less walking.

Eating and going out: Vienna, clearly. Many times as many restaurants and a wider range of kitchens, many times as many bars and clubs, though about half of the nightlife sits outside the central area.

Families: Vienna has about three times as many attractions near the centre and twice the park space, and both have 4 theme parks within reach. Salzburg suits shorter days on foot.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figure is a national price level, identical for both by construction, so it tells you nothing about which of these two costs less. The daily budget of €160 is one national estimate, not a measurement of either city, and should not be read as a trait of Salzburg or Vienna.

Big totals hide distance. Vienna's 22 beaches come without a month of water at 21°C, and about half its nightlife sits away from the centre, so its counts often mean travel across a much larger city. Salzburg's warmest months are also its wettest.

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
Salzburg
3
6
10
16
20
23
25
25
20
15
8
4
Vienna
3
6
11
17
21
25
27
27
21
15
9
4
Rainfall, mm
Salzburg
62
47
83
80
142
168
159
167
127
90
70
67
Vienna
42
38
52
42
80
70
78
71
64
47
46
46
Daylight, hours per day
Salzburg
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Vienna
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Salzburg
3
3
5
6
7
7
7
7
5
4
3
2
Vienna
2
4
5
7
8
8
9
9
6
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Salzburg: 1991-2020 normals, Salzburg (3.4 km from centre). Vienna: 1991-2020 normals, Wien / Hohe Warte (4.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Salzburg is at its best from June to August, with highs of 23-25°C, but those are also its wettest months at 159-168mm, so pack for showers. April and October are drier, around 80-90mm, at 15-16°C.

Vienna holds warmer and drier summers, 25-27°C from June to August with 70-78mm, and stays comfortable into September at 21°C with 64mm. In winter both sit near 3-4°C, though Vienna's February, at 38mm, is the driest month either city offers.

Getting there

Flying fromSalzburgVienna
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€183-250
MUC · 112 km
1 h 55 m
€112-162
VIE · 18 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€166-216
MUC · 112 km
2 h 15 m
€117-169
VIE · 18 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€227-312
1 stop
MUC · 112 km
2 h 45 m
€152-183
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 55 m
€186-283
SZG · 3 km
2 h 10 m
€105-189
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
AthensATH
2 h 25 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
2 h 10 m
€150-241
VIE · 18 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 30 m
€141-202
MUC · 112 km
1 h 35 m
€84-160
VIE · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 10 m
no fares
SZG · 3 km
1 h 25 m
€143-152
VIE · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 15 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
8 h 40 m
€736-786
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 0 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
10 h 35 m
no fares
VIE · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 55 m
no fares
SZG · 3 km
5 h 40 m
€292-307
VIE · 18 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

MeasureSalzburgVienna
Official languageGerman, Austrian Sign LanguageGerman, Austrian Sign Language
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
Elevation424 m151 m
Main airportSalzburg Airport (SZG)3 km from centre62 non-stop destinationsVienna International Airport (VIE)18 km from centre204 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureSalzburgVienna
City population155,0212,028,289
People per km²2,3604,890
Museums within 10 km38152
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre50113

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Salzburg or Vienna 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). 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.