VacationSelector

York or Zurich?

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

Your match

York
41
match

Wins on value for money and good for families with your weighting.

Zurich
✓ Best match
44
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

YorkZurich
Beaches & swimming. York and Zurich are level on 0.
YorkZurich
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km223
Coast distance50 km632 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Zurich leads by 13 points.13
YorkZurich
Score5467
Restaurants within 2 km of centre361974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3130
Museums & heritage. Zurich leads by 10 points.10
YorkZurich
Score4656
Museums within 10 km1876
Museums within 2 km of centre1637
Share of museums within 2 km %8949
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Zurich leads by 11 points.11
YorkZurich
Score4354
Drinking venues within 4 km450676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre353553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7882
Nightclubs within 4 km1474
Nature & day trips. Zurich leads by 4 points.4
YorkZurich
Score3337
Protected land share 50 km %1716
Landscape blanket share 50 km %169
Land share of disc %95100
Park area within 2 km42 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. York leads by 7 points.7
YorkZurich
Score4336
Tourist attractions within 2 km138
Park area within 2 km42 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Zurich leads by 20 points.20
YorkZurich
Score3959
Notable places within 2 km37119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. York leads by 19 points.19
YorkZurich
Score5435
Price level global84.9110.5
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. York leads by 3 points.3
YorkZurich
Score5653
Monthly daytime high6.7 °C to 20.9 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall39 mm to 66 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
York
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
20
18
14
10
7
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Rainfall, mm
York
53
44
39
48
43
61
56
65
58
66
62
60
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
York
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
York
2
3
4
5
6
5
6
5
4
3
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. York: 1991-2020 normals, Leeming (47.9 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromYorkZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
55 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 20 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 9 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 35 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
1 h 50 m
€84-103
ZRH · 9 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 55 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
BerlinBER
1 h 50 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 15 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
GenevaGVA
1 h 50 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
55 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 20 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
12 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
11 h 20 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

MeasureYorkZurich
Official languageEnglishFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation25 m408 m
Main airportLeeds Bradford Airport (LBA)39 km from centre73 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureYorkZurich
City population208,400452,421
People per km²7665,147
Museums within 10 km2463
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre5478

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow York 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). 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.