VacationSelector

Tromso or Zurich?

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

Your match

Tromso
27
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Zurich
✓ Best match
44
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat 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.

TromsoZurich
Beaches & swimming. Tromso leads by 52 points.52
TromsoZurich
Score520
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1423
Coast distance0 km632 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Zurich leads by 43 points.43
TromsoZurich
Score2467
Restaurants within 2 km of centre85974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1630
Museums & heritage. Zurich leads by 33 points.33
TromsoZurich
Score2356
Museums within 10 km1076
Museums within 2 km of centre837
Share of museums within 2 km %8049
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Zurich leads by 47 points.47
TromsoZurich
Score754
Drinking venues within 4 km67676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre61553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %9182
Nightclubs within 4 km574
Nature & day trips. Zurich leads by 26 points.26
TromsoZurich
Score1137
Protected land share 50 km %916
Landscape blanket share 50 km %99
Land share of disc %65100
Park area within 2 km7 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Zurich leads by 22 points.22
TromsoZurich
Score1436
Tourist attractions within 2 km98
Park area within 2 km7 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Zurich leads by 31 points.31
TromsoZurich
Score2859
Notable places within 2 km20119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tromso leads by 19 points.19
TromsoZurich
Score5435
Price level global85.1110.5
Daily budget€203€248
Year-round weather. Zurich leads by 20 points.20
TromsoZurich
Score3353
Monthly daytime high-1.1 °C to 16.3 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall56 mm to 128 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months00
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
Tromso
-1
-1
1
4
9
13
16
15
11
5
2
0
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Tromso
5
5
4
4
6
8
10
11
10
9
7
6
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Tromso
108
95
97
71
56
57
73
90
110
128
94
110
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Tromso
2
7
12
16
22
24
24
18
14
9
4
0
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Tromso
0
1
3
6
8
8
8
6
3
2
0
0
Zurich
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Tromso: 1991-2020 normals, Tromso (0.9 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromTromsoZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 20 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 35 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
1 h 45 m
€204-248
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
HelsinkiHEL
1 h 55 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 0 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
2 h 25 m
€207-228
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
3 h 20 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 35 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
BerlinBER
2 h 55 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 5 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
MadridMAD
4 h 45 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
ViennaVIE
3 h 30 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
1 h 25 m
€174-215
1 stop
ZRH · 9 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

MeasureTromsoZurich
Official languageNorwegian, Nynorsk, Bokmål, SámiFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyNorwegian Krone (NOK)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 112, ambulance 113, fire 110112
Elevation20 m408 m
Main airportTromsø Airport (TOS)4 km from centre45 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureTromsoZurich
City population79,943452,421
People per km²325,147
Museums within 10 km863
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre2378
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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

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.