VacationSelector

Athens or London?

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 value for money with your weighting.

London
64
match

Wins on places to eat 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.

Scoreboard

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

AthensLondon
Beaches & swimming. Athens leads by 48 points.48
AthensLondon
Score480
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km1447
Coast distance6 km43 km
Water distance6 km
Places to eat. London leads by 19 points.19
AthensLondon
Score6988
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4313,317
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2540
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 1 points.1
AthensLondon
Score7372
Museums within 10 km122148
Museums within 2 km of centre7849
Share of museums within 2 km %6433
Unesco sites within 50 km24
Nightlife. London leads by 14 points.14
AthensLondon
Score8195
Drinking venues within 4 km2,7185,327
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,3542,443
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5046
Nightclubs within 4 km136312
Nature & day trips. Athens leads by 5 points.5
AthensLondon
Score4540
Protected land share 50 km %516
Landscape blanket share 50 km %014
Land share of disc %5097
Park area within 2 km128 hectares84 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 4 points.4
AthensLondon
Score7175
Tourist attractions within 2 km6885
Park area within 2 km128 hectares84 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. London leads by 14 points.14
AthensLondon
Score7589
Notable places within 2 km291649
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 20 points.20
AthensLondon
Score7454
Price level global55.884.9
Daily budget€125
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 11 points.11
AthensLondon
Score7463
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C8.2 °C to 23.8 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm38 mm to 67 mm
Dry months71
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
London
8
9
12
15
18
22
24
23
20
16
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
London
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
2
2

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). London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensLondon
HeraklionHER
1 h 0 m
€84-111
ATH · 20 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
LarnacaLCA
1 h 45 m
€63-80
ATH · 20 km
4 h 30 m
€255-274
LHR · 23 km
ThessalonikiSKG
1 h 0 m
€103-128
ATH · 20 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
1 h 5 m
€92-144
LHR · 23 km
RhodesRHO
1 h 10 m
€87-123
ATH · 20 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€71-91
ATH · 20 km
1 h 45 m
€83-138
LGW · 40 km
ThiraJTR
55 m
€94-103
ATH · 20 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 5 m
€125-147
ATH · 20 km
4 h 55 m
no fares
LTN · 44 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
10 h 45 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
11 h 30 m
€665-831
1 stop
LHR · 23 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

MeasureAthensLondon
Official languageGreekEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation74 m4 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensLondon
City population643,4528,799,728
People per km²16,4995,598
Museums within 10 km88215
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km24
Distinct cuisines in the centre82116
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 London 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.