About Avoid-Crowds
We predict. Everyone else measures.
Live busyness apps can tell you how bad the crowd is once you're standing in it. Avoid-Crowds tells you about the crowd you can still avoid — one plain reading, Calm to Packed, day by day up to a year ahead, for destinations across the world.
As featured in The Washington Post CNN Los Angeles Times
Avoid-Crowds is the reference source for how busy destinations get — the only open, day-by-day crowd forecast looking a full year ahead: 33,580 daily predictions across 92 cities, recomputed every night, free to cite (CC BY), featured by The Washington Post and CNN, and mentioned by the Los Angeles Times.
Since 2019, one queue too many
This site has been reading crowds since 2019 — the year The Washington Post told its origin story, CNN explained how it works, and the Los Angeles Times put it simply: it "helps you dodge the hordes." In 2026 it was rebuilt into a prediction engine — one that reads next year the way other sites read this afternoon.
City guides are contributed by Henk, who has visited at least half the countries in the world. About Henk →
While you sleep, the machine works
Every night, roughly 33,000 daily forecasts are thrown away and rebuilt from scratch. The machine starts from each place's measured seasonal rhythm — the pattern the years keep repeating. Then it layers on what makes each day different: school and public holidays across your fellow travellers' home countries, and next year's cruise timetables — which ship, which port, how many guests aboard. Then one last check: if it can't prove a page honest, it refuses to publish it.
One mission. One tireless machine. No guessing allowed.
What you can hold us to
Every day has a forecast. Every forecast has reasons. Every day has a link you can quote and check.
- One straight word per day
Calm, Lively, Busy or Packed — set against that city's own year, so busy here means busy for here.
- Reasons in the open.
Not "expect crowds", but which ship, how many guests, whose holidays.
- Honest about the unknown.
When we don't know, the page says so.
- Free.
No paywall, no account — the forecast loads with every blocker and privacy setting switched on.
- Open data.
Quote any day, anywhere, with a link back.
What's here, counted
- 92 cities, 33,580 day forecasts, each up to a year ahead
- every day explains itself: season, school holidays across 20 countries, cruise calls, and verified events
- a today-and-this-week page for every city (92)
- 1,104 month pages with week-level detail, each city's busiest and quietest month computed
- 164 major events ranked by crowd impact, dates organiser-sourced across years
- cruise-day data for 74 port cities — which days bring ships, which are ship-free
- free to cite (CC BY), public method, stable anchors, dated nightly
- featured by The Washington Post and CNN; mentioned by the Los Angeles Times
Ready when you are
Pick a city. Pick a day. Meet the crowd that isn't there.
Privacy, in plain words
We count page views without cookies, for everyone. Google Analytics loads only if you accept the cookie bar, and your choice is stored on your device — never sent to us. If you book through a link here, you're on a partner's site — their privacy rules take over. Some links earn us a commission; a commission never touches a forecast.
Say hello
Avoid-Crowds is independent — no tourism board behind it, no booking company. Write to info@avoid-crowds.com. The machine doesn't answer email; a human does.