VacationSelector

Athens or Paphos?

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 sights concentration and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Paphos
46
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

AthensPaphos
Beaches & swimming. Paphos leads by 31 points.31
AthensPaphos
Score4879
Swim season months56
Beaches 10 km1427
Coast distance6 km1 km
Water distance6 km1 km
Places to eat. Athens leads by 25 points.25
AthensPaphos
Score6944
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,431251
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2522
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 51 points.51
AthensPaphos
Score7322
Museums within 10 km1228
Museums within 2 km of centre783
Share of museums within 2 km %6438
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Athens leads by 51 points.51
AthensPaphos
Score8130
Drinking venues within 4 km2,718224
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354161
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5072
Nightclubs within 4 km13611
Nature & day trips. Athens leads by 22 points.22
AthensPaphos
Score4523
Protected land share 50 km %52
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5033
Park area within 2 km128 hectares27 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 29 points.29
AthensPaphos
Score7142
Tourist attractions within 2 km6830
Park area within 2 km128 hectares27 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 56 points.56
AthensPaphos
Score7519
Notable places within 2 km29112
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 4 points.4
AthensPaphos
Score7470
Price level global55.861.4
Daily budget€125€129
Year-round weather. Paphos leads by 12 points.12
AthensPaphos
Score7486
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C17 °C to 30.8 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm0 mm to 98 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
Paphos
17
17
19
21
25
28
30
31
29
27
23
19
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Paphos
17
17
17
18
21
24
27
28
27
25
22
19
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Paphos
81
47
29
17
10
2
1
0
5
14
42
98
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Paphos
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Paphos
No sunshine record

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). Paphos: 1991-2020 normals, Paphos Airport (8.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensPaphos
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
4 h 25 m
€125-167
PFO · 8 km
ThessalonikiSKG
1 h 0 m
€103-128
ATH · 20 km
1 h 55 m
€96-218
PFO · 8 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 5 m
€125-147
ATH · 20 km
1 h 5 m
€149-173
PFO · 8 km
ManchesterMAN
3 h 45 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
HeraklionHER
1 h 0 m
€84-111
ATH · 20 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
LCA · 110 km
ThiraJTR
55 m
€94-103
ATH · 20 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
LCA · 110 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
4 h 5 m
€197-331
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
ChaniaCHQ
1 h 0 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 10 m
€83-197
ATH · 20 km
3 h 0 m
€206-323
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
ECN · 107 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

MeasureAthensPaphos
Official languageGreekTurkish, Greek, Modern Greek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG240 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation74 m72 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsPaphos International Airport (PFO)8 km from centre57 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days17 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensPaphos
City population643,45235,961
People per km²16,4991,987
Museums within 10 km884
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre8236
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months6 months

Where else could you go?

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

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.