VacationSelector

Zadar or Split?

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

Your match

Zadar
47
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families with your weighting.

Split
✓ Best match
51
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nightlife 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 town itself is the point: more museums, a wider choice of restaurants and most of the drinking and club life, with 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach and more notable buildings within an easy walk of the centre.

Choose Zadar for a smaller town with more of the surrounding land protected, a theme park for children, and slightly better conditions in September and October.

Scoreboard

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

ZadarSplit
Beaches & swimming. Zadar and Split are level on 73.
ZadarSplit
Score7373
Swim season months44
Beaches 10 km4987
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Split leads by 13 points.13
ZadarSplit
Score2538
Restaurants within 2 km of centre143268
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1115
Museums & heritage. Split leads by 19 points.19
ZadarSplit
Score3352
Museums within 10 km818
Museums within 2 km of centre816
Share of museums within 2 km %10089
Unesco sites within 50 km24
Nightlife. Split leads by 16 points.16
ZadarSplit
Score2541
Drinking venues within 4 km194379
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre139263
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7269
Nightclubs within 4 km423
Nature & day trips. Zadar leads by 17 points.17
ZadarSplit
Score5538
Protected land share 50 km %129
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4762
Park area within 2 km30 hectares30 hectares
Good for families. Zadar leads by 5 points.5
ZadarSplit
Score3126
Tourist attractions within 2 km99
Park area within 2 km30 hectares30 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Split leads by 11 points.11
ZadarSplit
Score3142
Notable places within 2 km2343
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Zadar and Split are level on 80.
ZadarSplit
Score8080
Price level global48.548.5
Daily budget€138€138
Year-round weather. Zadar and Split are level on 69.
ZadarSplit
Score6969
Monthly daytime high10.4 °C to 31 °C10.7 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall25 mm to 117 mm25 mm to 117 mm
Dry months22
0255075100

Where they differ

Split has about twice as many museums as Zadar, and 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 2. It also has about twice as many places to drink and many times as many nightclubs, most of them near the centre, and roughly twice as many restaurants close by, across a wider range of kitchens.

Zadar's advantage is outside the town: 12% of the land around it is protected against 9% around Split, and it has 1 theme park within reach where Split has none.

Where they are alike

Both sit on the water, the sea 0km from each centre, and both give 4 months when it is 21°C or more. Swimming is part of an ordinary stay in either, not a day trip.

Their weather years run close to identical, with daytime highs of about 11-31°C and the same rainfall pattern month by month. Families are on similar ground too: comparable numbers of attractions and much the same park space near each centre.

Which traveller are you?

If museums and old streets are the reason you are going, take Split: about twice as many museums as Zadar, twice as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, and 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 2.

If evenings matter, Split again. It has roughly twice as many restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens, about twice as many places to drink and many times as many nightclubs, most of them walkable.

If you plan to drive out for the day, or are travelling with children, Zadar: 12% of the land around it is protected against 9% around Split, and there is 1 theme park within reach.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figure is a national price level, identical for both by construction, so it carries no information about which of these two towns costs less. The €138 a day beside it is one national estimate, not a measurement of either place.

Sunshine is missing for Zadar: no nearby station records it, so the figure is absent rather than low, and the monthly ratings there rest on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone. Rainfall is identical in both series, so what separates the two on weather comes down to small gaps in daytime highs and sea temperature.

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
Zadar
10
11
15
19
23
28
31
31
26
21
16
12
Split
11
12
15
18
23
28
31
31
25
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Zadar
14
13
13
14
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Split
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Zadar
73
64
59
62
58
49
25
32
82
80
117
99
Split
73
64
59
62
58
49
25
32
82
80
117
99
Daylight, hours per day
Zadar
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Split
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Zadar
No sunshine record
Split
5
5
7
7
9
10
12
11
8
7
4
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Zadar: 1999-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Zadar / Zemunik (9.9 km from centre). Split: 1991-2020 normals, Split / Marjan (0.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Split rates highest in July and August, when highs reach 31°C, the sea is at its warmest and rain falls to 25mm.

Zadar holds up slightly better either side of that peak, in April and again through the autumn, with 26°C in September and the sea still warm enough to swim. Both share the same rainfall, which climbs to 117mm late in the year, so early autumn beats the end of it.

Getting there

Flying fromZadarSplit
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 20 m
no fares
ZAD · 10 km
2 h 30 m
€88-160
SPU · 12 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 10 m
€186-201
1 stop
SPU · 107 km
2 h 10 m
€186-201
1 stop
SPU · 12 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 5 m
€294
SPU · 107 km
1 h 5 m
€294
SPU · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€169-225
SPU · 107 km
2 h 5 m
€169-225
SPU · 12 km
MunichMUC
1 h 25 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SPU · 12 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 10 m
€45-192
ZAD · 10 km
1 h 15 m
€233-281
SPU · 12 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 40 m
€161-226
1 stop
ZAD · 10 km
1 h 45 m
€169-224
SPU · 12 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 45 m
€123-165
1 stop
SPU · 107 km
2 h 45 m
€123-165
1 stop
SPU · 12 km
OsloOSL, TRF
2 h 55 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
SPU · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
9 h 0 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
SPU · 12 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

MeasureZadarSplit
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
Elevation5 m0 m
Main airportZadar Airport (ZAD)10 km from centre67 non-stop destinationsSplit Saint Jerome Airport (SPU)12 km from centre70 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureZadarSplit
City population70,779160,577
Museums within 10 km111
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km24
Distinct cuisines in the centre1731
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months4 months

Where else could you go?

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