Best time to visit: twelve months side by side
You say what temperature suits you, how many rainy days you can live with and whether you want to avoid the crowds. The tool then lays out all twelve months of your destination and marks the ones that fit. The usual answer to "when should I go" is "May or September", and it is almost never right for everyone. Swimming needs warm water, not warm air. Museums are better without the heat. And if your holiday falls in July, you want to know how bad it really gets, not that you should have gone in May.
Your destination
The climate figures are rounded long-term averages, as of September 2026, and serve as orientation. A single month of travel can differ from them noticeably. For the forecast that matters on your dates, use the national weather service, not this table.
When it works
Twelve months in detail
| Month | Daily maximum | Rainy days | Sea | Crowds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The table appears once a destination is chosen. | ||||
Everything runs in your browser: the tool loads nothing and stores nothing.
How the tool calculates
Every month gets a score. It starts at a hundred and loses points for each mismatch with your settings. Temperature weighs the most: six points per degree above or below your preferred range. Rain comes next at seven points per day over your limit, then high season as a flat deduction. That order is deliberate. Someone who flies to Athens in July is annoyed by 33 degrees first and by the queue at the Acropolis afterwards. The other way round, one extra rainy day in Amsterdam barely registers, because it already rains every third day there anyway. Separately from the score, the tool checks whether a month meets every condition at once. Those months are outlined with a solid border in the strip and shown in bold in the table. The score ranks, the check decides. So a month can sit at the top and still break one condition: it is then the best compromise available, not a match. If you switch on "swimming matters", sea temperature joins the calculation. From 22 degrees it earns points, below that it loses them heavily. The sea lags the air by about six weeks, which is why September beats June for swimming almost everywhere on the Mediterranean, even though the air is already warm in June.
Where the numbers come from
The values are rounded long-term climate averages as of September 2026: average daily maximum temperature, the number of days with at least one millimetre of rain and, where there is a coast within reach, the sea temperature. They describe what a month normally does, not what your particular year will do. The difference is big enough to name. A single June can run five degrees above the average, and an October can deliver three months of rain in one week. The table helps with the question "which month", it does not replace a forecast for "which week". The high season marking follows travel patterns, not weather. Vienna and Prague are marked as high season in December even though it is cold: the Christmas markets fill the centres just as summer does. Munich is also marked in September, because Oktoberfest is there and room rates in those two weeks are a chapter of their own. For binding values, the national weather service of the destination applies. We state our figures with a date so that it is clear how old they are, and we replace them when we check them again.
What the tool cannot do
It is not a weather forecast. It knows no single day and no single week, only what is usual in a month. It knows no prices. The shoulder season is usually the cheaper time too, but school holidays, trade fairs and public holidays shift that. For the cost side there is the trip budget calculator. It knows no local detail. The monsoon in South East Asia does not behave the same across a whole country, and on a coast the wind can ruin an entire region while two hundred kilometres away it is perfect beach weather. And it does not decide for you. Two months with the same score can mean completely different trips: one warm and busy, the other cool and empty. The table below shows both sides so that you make the call and not the tool.