VacationSelector

Athens or Beijing?

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

Your match

Athens
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

Beijing
53
match

Wins on good for families and value for money 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.

AthensBeijing
Beaches & swimming. Athens leads by 48 points.48
AthensBeijing
Score480
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km140
Coast distance6 km145 km
Water distance6 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 10 points.10
AthensBeijing
Score7363
Museums within 10 km12295
Museums within 2 km of centre7815
Share of museums within 2 km %6416
Unesco sites within 50 km26
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Nature & day trips. Athens leads by 10 points.10
AthensBeijing
Score4535
Protected land share 50 km %53
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %50100
Park area within 2 km128 hectares143 hectares
Good for families. Beijing leads by 6 points.6
AthensBeijing
Score7177
Tourist attractions within 2 km6841
Park area within 2 km128 hectares143 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km112
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 25 points.25
AthensBeijing
Score7550
Notable places within 2 km29169
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Beijing leads by 5 points.5
AthensBeijing
Score7479
Price level global55.849
Daily budget€125
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 8 points.8
AthensBeijing
Score7466
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C2.2 °C to 31.8 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm3 mm to 163 mm
Dry months78
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
Athens
13
14
17
21
27
32
34
35
30
24
19
15
Beijing
2
6
13
21
27
31
32
31
27
19
10
4
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Beijing
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Beijing
3
6
9
23
38
74
163
112
56
27
14
3
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Beijing
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Beijing
6
6
7
8
9
7
6
7
7
7
6
6

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Athens: 1991-2020 normals, Athens / Athenai / Pláka (2.2 km from centre). Beijing: 1991-2020 normals, Beijing (11.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensBeijing
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
10 h 15 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
9 h 0 m
€475-645
PEK · 25 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
10 h 45 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 55 m
€144-160
PKX · 45 km
ChengduTFU, CTU
9 h 10 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
2 h 25 m
€217-253
PKX · 45 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 40 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 45 m
€180-197
PKX · 45 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 5 m
€125-147
ATH · 20 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€97-139
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
10 h 15 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€71-91
ATH · 20 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
10 h 15 m
€634
ATH · 20 km
13 h 5 m
€1,020-1172
2 stops
PEK · 25 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

MeasureAthensBeijing
Official languageGreekPutonghua
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yuan Renminbi (CNY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzACI220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number112Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119
Elevation74 m43 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsBeijing Capital International Airport (PEK)25 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days6 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensBeijing
City population643,45221,893,095
People per km²16,4991,334
Museums within 10 km8883
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km26
Distinct cuisines in the centre8229
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Athens or Beijing 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.