VacationSelector

Vienna or Zurich?

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

Your match

Vienna
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on good for families and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Zurich
44
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

ViennaZurich
Beaches & swimming. Vienna and Zurich are level on 0.
ViennaZurich
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km2223
Coast distance10,000 km632 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Vienna leads by 10 points.10
ViennaZurich
Score7767
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,617974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3730
Museums & heritage. Vienna leads by 25 points.25
ViennaZurich
Score8156
Museums within 10 km19276
Museums within 2 km of centre11037
Share of museums within 2 km %5749
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Vienna leads by 20 points.20
ViennaZurich
Score7454
Drinking venues within 4 km1,948676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,089553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5682
Nightclubs within 4 km10874
Nature & day trips. Zurich leads by 5 points.5
ViennaZurich
Score3237
Protected land share 50 km %416
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km93 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Vienna leads by 33 points.33
ViennaZurich
Score6936
Tourist attractions within 2 km468
Park area within 2 km93 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km42
Sights concentration. Vienna leads by 16 points.16
ViennaZurich
Score7559
Notable places within 2 km287119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Vienna leads by 24 points.24
ViennaZurich
Score5935
Price level global76.9110.5
Daily budget€160€248
Year-round weather. Vienna leads by 8 points.8
ViennaZurich
Score6153
Monthly daytime high3.3 °C to 26.8 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 80 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months10
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
Vienna
3
6
11
17
21
25
27
27
21
15
9
4
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Rainfall, mm
Vienna
42
38
52
42
80
70
78
71
64
47
46
46
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Vienna
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Vienna
2
4
5
7
8
8
9
9
6
4
2
2
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. Vienna: 1991-2020 normals, Wien / Hohe Warte (4.7 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromViennaZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€105-189
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 5 m
€121-285
VIE · 18 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 25 m
€143-152
VIE · 18 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
€180-245
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
BerlinBER
1 h 15 m
€171-190
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 15 m
€117-169
VIE · 18 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 40 m
€292-307
VIE · 18 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 40 m
€736-786
1 stop
VIE · 18 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
10 h 35 m
no fares
VIE · 18 km
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
CancunCUN
11 h 30 m
no fares
VIE · 18 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
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

MeasureViennaZurich
Official languageGerman, Austrian Sign LanguageFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)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 number112112
Elevation151 m408 m
Main airportVienna International Airport (VIE)18 km from centre204 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureViennaZurich
City population2,028,289452,421
People per km²4,8905,147
Museums within 10 km15263
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre11378

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Vienna 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. 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. 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.

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.