VacationSelector

Split or Zagreb?

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

Your match

Split
✓ Best match
51
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Zagreb
47
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 Split if the sea is the point: 87 beaches within reach and a summer where swimming is the day's structure, with warmer weather at either end of the year.

Choose Zagreb if you want a city to walk: more to see on foot from the centre, a wider spread of kitchens and far more bars and clubs, with rain spread through the summer rather than the autumn.

Scoreboard

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

SplitZagreb
Beaches & swimming. Split leads by 73 points.73
SplitZagreb
Score730
Swim season months40
Beaches 10 km878
Coast distance0 km117 km
Water distance0 km—
Places to eat. Zagreb leads by 14 points.14
SplitZagreb
Score3852
Restaurants within 2 km of centre268374
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1527
Museums & heritage. Split leads by 7 points.7
SplitZagreb
Score5245
Museums within 10 km1841
Museums within 2 km of centre1640
Share of museums within 2 km %8998
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. Zagreb leads by 20 points.20
SplitZagreb
Score4161
Drinking venues within 4 km3791,009
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre263571
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6957
Nightclubs within 4 km2363
Nature & day trips. Split leads by 4 points.4
SplitZagreb
Score3834
Protected land share 50 km %99
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %62100
Park area within 2 km30 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. Zagreb leads by 2 points.2
SplitZagreb
Score2628
Tourist attractions within 2 km97
Park area within 2 km30 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Zagreb leads by 18 points.18
SplitZagreb
Score4260
Notable places within 2 km43122
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Split and Zagreb are level on 80.
SplitZagreb
Score8080
Price level global48.548.5
Daily budget€138€138
Year-round weather. Split leads by 7 points.7
SplitZagreb
Score6962
Monthly daytime high10.7 °C to 31 °C5.4 °C to 28.5 °C
Monthly rainfall25 mm to 117 mm47 mm to 104 mm
Dry months20
0255075100

Where they differ

Split is the one with a coast: 87 beaches nearby against Zagreb's 8, and four months when the sea holds 21°C or more. It also runs warmer through the year, 11-31°C against 5-29°C.

Zagreb has about three times as many notable places within walking distance of its centre, and about three times as many bars and clubs, though in Zagreb roughly half sit near the centre where in Split most do. Its restaurants also cover a much wider range of kitchens.

Where they are alike

Neither is set up for children in particular: no theme park within reach of either, and while Split has slightly more attractions close to its centre, Zagreb answers with roughly twice as much park space. Both are workable with kids rather than built for them.

Day trips are limited in both cases, with 9% of the surrounding land protected on each side. Both have a real museum stock, Zagreb's larger, Split's set against 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach.

Which traveller are you?

If swimming shapes the trip, Split is the only option here: a long list of beaches nearby and a sea at 21°C or more from June to September, with Zagreb having effectively no coast.

If you want museums, restaurants and late nights inside walking distance, Zagreb is the stronger base, with more notable places on foot from the centre, roughly twice the museum count and a far broader choice of kitchens and bars.

Families are close to a draw. Neither has a theme park within reach. Split puts more attractions near the centre and adds the sea; Zagreb offers about twice the park space and drier early-year months at 5-13°C.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figures are identical here by construction: they reflect a national price level, not either city, so the comparison tells you nothing about which trip costs less. The €138 daily budget beside them is one national estimate rather than a measurement of Split or Zagreb, and it will not track what either place charges in peak season.

Split's beach count describes a narrow season. The sea only reaches 21°C or more in four months, which is also when the crowds arrive, and outside it the coast is a walking city with autumn rainfall up to 117mm.

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
Split
11
12
15
18
23
28
31
31
25
21
16
12
Zagreb
5
8
13
18
23
27
29
28
22
17
11
6
Sea temperature, °C
Split
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
21
19
16
Zagreb
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Split
73
64
59
62
58
49
25
32
82
80
117
99
Zagreb
47
48
49
63
76
90
87
85
104
91
88
63
Daylight, hours per day
Split
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zagreb
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Split
5
5
7
7
9
10
12
11
8
7
4
4
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. Split: 1991-2020 normals, Split / Marjan (0.9 km from centre). Zagreb: 1991-2020 normals, Zagreb / Gric (0.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Split peaks from June to September, with July and August highs of 28-31°C, sea at 24-25°C and the driest weeks of the year at 25-32mm. September still swims at 23°C. Late autumn turns wet, up to 117mm.

Zagreb works best in May and June, at 23-27°C, but its summer rain sits near 90mm a month and early autumn is wetter still. Its driest months are also its coldest, with highs of 5-13°C.

Getting there

Flying fromSplitZagreb
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 30 m
€88-160
SPU · 12 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 45 m
€169-224
SPU · 12 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 10 m
€186-201
1 stop
SPU · 12 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€169-225
SPU · 12 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
MunichMUC
1 h 25 m
no fares
SPU · 12 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 15 m
€233-281
SPU · 12 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 5 m
€294
SPU · 12 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 55 m
no fares
SPU · 12 km
2 h 0 m
€153-254
ZAG · 11 km
DubrovnikDBV
55 m
no fares
SPU · 12 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
2 h 0 m
€205-272
1 stop
SPU · 12 km
1 h 45 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 2026-08 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

MeasureSplitZagreb
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 airportSplit Saint Jerome Airport (SPU)12 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsZagreb Franjo Tuđman International Airport (ZAG)11 km from centre60 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureSplitZagreb
City population160,577767,131
Museums within 10 km1127
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre3142
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 Split 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.