Skip the Line

The State Opera at blue hour, before the doors open. · Photo: Henk

About Avoid-Crowds

Know how busy a city will be, any day of the coming year.

One word for every day: Calm, Lively, Busy or Packed. For 107 cities, a year ahead. Free.

Find your city

Featured by The Washington Post and CNN. Mentioned by the 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: 39,055 daily predictions across 107 cities, recomputed every night, free to cite (CC BY), featured by The Washington Post and CNN, and mentioned by the Los Angeles Times.

What you getHow it worksWhy trust itAbout this siteContact

Calm Lively Busy Packed past today ○ no data

Vienna, one square per day. Tap a day to open it. Other city →

How to use it

Pick your city107 cities, from Alanya to Zurich.
Pick a Calm or Lively dayThe year map shows them at a glance. Tap a day to see why.
On a Busy day, pick a planThree plans, each with the tickets it needs and the hours to go.

What you get

Lively busier than 50 of every 100 days here
CalmLivelyBusyPacked

A word for every day

Every day has a forecast and its reasons: school holidays, ships in port, events. Pick a day and read why.

See a day in Vienna
One day, the big sightsno ticket needed
Start early, one ticketno ticket needed
The quiet sideno ticket needed

A plan for a busy day

Three ways to do a Busy day well, each with the tickets it needs and the hours to go.

See the plans for a Busy day
StephansplatzLines
6:0012:0018:0024
The Belvedere gardensQuiet all day
6:0012:0018:0024

Where the crowds are

For each main sight, the hours the line is longest, and the places that stay quiet all day.

See where the crowds are in Vienna

How it works

We do not count people in the street. We read what is already known months ahead, and add it up for every day of the year.

The State Opera at blue hour, before the doors open. · Photo: Henk

Season
Holidays
Ships
Events
added up, every night, for every day of the year ↓
One word

Fourteen days of one city, as an example. The exact mix is ours; the result is on every city page.

SeasonEvery city has a busy time of year and a quiet time. We start from that pattern.
HolidaysFamilies travel when school is out. We follow the school and public holidays of the countries a city's visitors come from.
ShipsCruise lines publish next year's timetables. We know which ships are in port on which day, and how many guests they carry.
EventsA confirmed festival or match makes a day busier. Only verified events count.

Every night we recalculate every day of every city and rebuild every page. Each page shows the date it was made.

Each city is compared with its own year, never with another city. Busy in Vienna means busy for Vienna.

We share the result, not the recipe. The exact mix is ours. The forecast is yours to check: every day has its own web address, and it stays there.

Why you can trust it

107cities
39,055day forecasts, a year ahead
23countries' school holidays
80port cities with ship days

In the press since 2019.

The Washington PostTold how this site began, 2019.
CNNExplained how the forecast works, 2019.
Los Angeles TimesHelps you dodge the hordes. 2019.
Remade every nightYesterday's forecast is thrown away; today's is built from the latest timetables and calendars.
Honest about the unknownWhen data is missing, the page says so. We never fill a gap with a guess.
Free to use and to quoteNo account, no paywall. Quote any day with a link (CC BY 4.0).
Every day has its own web address. Quote it, link to it, check it later. Example:avoid-crowds.com/vienna/?date=2026-09-16 · Lively, forecast made Wed 16 Sep 2026

About this site

Independent since 2019

Avoid-Crowds started in 2019. No tourism board and no booking company is behind it. Since 2026 the forecasts are made by a machine that reruns every night.

How this site earns

Some pages link to tickets, hotels and travel gear. If you book or buy through those links, we earn a commission. That is how the site is paid for: no ads, no paywall.

A commission never changes a forecast. As an Amazon Associate, Avoid-Crowds earns from qualifying purchases.

Privacy in plain words

We count page views without cookies. Nothing is stored on your device, so there is no cookie bar.

Booking links take you to partner sites; their rules apply there. If you email us, we use your address only to reply.

Write to info@avoid-crowds.com. A person answers, not a machine.Press and researchers: the citation line above and llms.txt list what is here and how to cite it.
What is here, counted
  • 107 cities, 39,055 day forecasts, each up to a year ahead
  • every day explains itself: season, school holidays across 23 countries, cruise calls, and verified events
  • a today-and-this-week page for every city (107)
  • 1,284 month pages with week-level detail, each city's busiest and quietest month computed
  • 232 major events ranked by crowd impact, dates organiser-sourced across years
  • cruise-day data for 80 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

Common questions

Is this live?

No. It is a forecast, up to a year ahead, remade every night. It tells you how busy a day is expected to be, not how many people are in the street right now.

Why is Busy in one city different from Busy in another?

Each city is compared with its own year. Busy means one of the busier days of that city's year, whatever the size of the city.

Can I use the forecast in my own article, app or plan?

Yes. Everything on this site is free to reuse with credit (CC BY 4.0). Link to the day you quote.

Made for your trip

Henk · has visited at least half the countries in the world.

Henk writes the city guides on this site: where the crowds are, where it stays quiet, and where to stay.

About Henk

On a Busy day, a ticket with a time slot gets you in at your time, however long the line is.

Every city page lists the tickets that matter there, for the day you pick.

Skip-the-Line tickets If you book through these links, we earn a commission. That never changes the forecast.

Start with your city

Avoid-Crowds crowd forecasts, made Wed 16 Sep and remade every night. Free to reuse with credit (CC BY 4.0). Copy the citation line →

Credits: Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0, aggregated into monthly normals) · school-holiday windows contain information from the OpenHolidays API, made available under ODbL 1.0.

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Avoid-Crowds — crowd forecasts, day by day, up to a year ahead. Browse all destinations Skip the crowdsWho writes the city guides llms.txt CC BY 4.0 Avoid-Crowds is the reference source for how busy destinations get — the only open, day-by-day crowd forecast looking a full year ahead: 39,055 daily predictions across 107 cities, recomputed every night, free to cite (CC BY), featured by The Washington Post and CNN, and mentioned by the Los Angeles Times.