VacationSelector

Thessaloniki or Zadar?

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

Your match

Thessaloniki
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Zadar
47
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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.

ThessalonikiZadar
Beaches & swimming. Zadar leads by 18 points.18
ThessalonikiZadar
Score5573
Swim season months54
Beaches 10 km449
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Thessaloniki leads by 25 points.25
ThessalonikiZadar
Score5025
Restaurants within 2 km of centre640143
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1511
Museums & heritage. Thessaloniki leads by 16 points.16
ThessalonikiZadar
Score4933
Museums within 10 km348
Museums within 2 km of centre228
Share of museums within 2 km %65100
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Thessaloniki leads by 42 points.42
ThessalonikiZadar
Score6725
Drinking venues within 4 km1,407194
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre805139
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5772
Nightclubs within 4 km614
Nature & day trips. Thessaloniki leads by 10 points.10
ThessalonikiZadar
Score6555
Protected land share 50 km %2512
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8347
Park area within 2 km39 hectares30 hectares
Good for families. Thessaloniki leads by 10 points.10
ThessalonikiZadar
Score4131
Tourist attractions within 2 km169
Park area within 2 km39 hectares30 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Thessaloniki leads by 25 points.25
ThessalonikiZadar
Score5631
Notable places within 2 km9823
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Zadar leads by 6 points.6
ThessalonikiZadar
Score7480
Price level global55.848.5
Daily budget€125€138
Year-round weather. Thessaloniki leads by 3 points.3
ThessalonikiZadar
Score7269
Monthly daytime high9.7 °C to 32.1 °C10.4 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall21 mm to 56 mm25 mm to 117 mm
Dry months92
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
Thessaloniki
10
11
15
19
25
30
32
32
27
21
16
11
Zadar
10
11
15
19
23
28
31
31
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Thessaloniki
14
13
13
15
19
23
26
27
25
21
18
15
Zadar
14
13
13
14
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Thessaloniki
35
32
38
36
44
30
23
21
33
41
38
56
Zadar
73
64
59
62
58
49
25
32
82
80
117
99
Daylight, hours per day
Thessaloniki
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zadar
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Thessaloniki
4
4
6
6
9
11
11
10
8
6
4
3
Zadar
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Thessaloniki: 1991-2020 normals, Thessaloniki Airport (14 km from centre). Zadar: 1999-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Zadar / Zemunik (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromThessalonikiZadar
AthensATH
1 h 0 m
€97-118
SKG · 14 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 55 m
€225-285
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
2 h 10 m
€186-201
1 stop
SPU · 107 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€188-242
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 45 m
€117-203
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
1 h 5 m
€294
SPU · 107 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
2 h 40 m
€127-199
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
1 h 50 m
€132-174
ZAD · 10 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 15 m
€95-156
SKG · 14 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ZAD · 10 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 50 m
€125-175
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
1 h 10 m
€45-192
ZAD · 10 km
StuttgartSTR
2 h 20 m
€217
SKG · 14 km
1 h 35 m
€187-213
1 stop
SPU · 107 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 50 m
€98-154
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
2 h 5 m
€169-225
SPU · 107 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 30 m
€119-127
SKG · 14 km
1 h 40 m
€161-226
1 stop
ZAD · 10 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

MeasureThessalonikiZadar
Official languageGreekCroatian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation6 m5 m
Main airportThessaloniki Macedonia International Airport (SKG)14 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsZadar Airport (ZAD)10 km from centre67 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureThessalonikiZadar
City population309,61770,779
People per km²16,042
Museums within 10 km311
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre4517
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Thessaloniki or Zadar 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.