VacationSelector

Athens or Sydney?

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 value for money and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Sydney
64
match

Wins on nature & day trips and beaches & swimming 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.

AthensSydney
Beaches & swimming. Sydney leads by 12 points.12
AthensSydney
Score4860
Swim season months56
Beaches 10 km14160
Coast distance6 km7 km
Water distance6 km7 km
Places to eat. Sydney leads by 9 points.9
AthensSydney
Score6978
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4312,205
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2531
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 22 points.22
AthensSydney
Score7351
Museums within 10 km12244
Museums within 2 km of centre7820
Share of museums within 2 km %6445
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Athens leads by 6 points.6
AthensSydney
Score8175
Drinking venues within 4 km2,7182,050
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,3541,405
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5069
Nightclubs within 4 km136120
Nature & day trips. Sydney leads by 13 points.13
AthensSydney
Score4558
Protected land share 50 km %510
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5052
Park area within 2 km128 hectares115 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 7 points.7
AthensSydney
Score7164
Tourist attractions within 2 km6837
Park area within 2 km128 hectares115 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 15 points.15
AthensSydney
Score7560
Notable places within 2 km291123
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 24 points.24
AthensSydney
Score7450
Price level global55.890.2
Daily budget€125
Year-round weather. Sydney leads by 7 points.7
AthensSydney
Score7481
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C17.7 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm55 mm to 121 mm
Dry months70
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
Sydney
28
27
26
23
21
18
18
19
22
24
25
26
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Sydney
23
23
23
22
21
20
19
18
18
19
20
21
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Sydney
80
116
90
95
89
121
70
63
57
55
71
68
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sydney
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Sydney
8
6
7
7
7
6
7
8
8
8
7
8

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). Sydney: 1991-2020 normals, Sydney Airport (3.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensSydney
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
20 h 40 m
€931-1073
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
18 h 15 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
20 h 35 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
11 h 20 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
8 h 5 m
€498-549
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€97-139
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
19 h 55 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 40 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
10 h 30 m
€548-574
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
DohaDOH
4 h 10 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
15 h 15 m
€997-1100
SYD · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
19 h 30 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
10 h 45 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
9 h 55 m
€539-575
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 30 m
€286-308
ATH · 20 km
14 h 50 m
no fares
SYD · 9 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

MeasureAthensSydney
Official languageGreekEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Australian Dollar (AUD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzI230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+10, UTC+11 in summer
Emergency number112000
Elevation74 m6 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsSydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (SYD)9 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensSydney
City population643,4525,450,496
People per km²16,499449
Museums within 10 km8838
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre8279
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 Sydney 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.