VacationSelector

Bangkok or Osaka?

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

Your match

Bangkok
62
match

Wins on nature & day trips and value for money with your weighting.

Osaka
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on museums & heritage 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.

BangkokOsaka
Beaches & swimming. Osaka leads by 15 points.15
BangkokOsaka
Score4055
Swim season months125
Beaches 10 km025
Coast distance23 km7 km
Water distance23 km7 km
Places to eat. Osaka leads by 7 points.7
BangkokOsaka
Score8390
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,9579,134
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2625
Museums & heritage. Osaka leads by 18 points.18
BangkokOsaka
Score4664
Museums within 10 km10378
Museums within 2 km of centre3022
Share of museums within 2 km %2928
Unesco sites within 50 km06
Nightlife. Osaka leads by 14 points.14
BangkokOsaka
Score8397
Drinking venues within 4 km3,3838,473
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,3964,492
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4153
Nightclubs within 4 km7297
Nature & day trips. Bangkok leads by 23 points.23
BangkokOsaka
Score5128
Protected land share 50 km %1
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %8384
Park area within 2 km42 hectares88 hectares
Good for families. Osaka leads by 15 points.15
BangkokOsaka
Score5772
Tourist attractions within 2 km3147
Park area within 2 km42 hectares88 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km47
Sights concentration. Bangkok and Osaka are level on 48.
BangkokOsaka
Score4848
Notable places within 2 km6263
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bangkok leads by 23 points.23
BangkokOsaka
Score9370
Price level global29.762.4
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Osaka leads by 7 points.7
BangkokOsaka
Score5663
Monthly daytime high32.4 °C to 35.8 °C9.7 °C to 33.6 °C
Monthly rainfall7 mm to 331 mm47 mm to 185 mm
Dry months30
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
Bangkok
33
34
35
36
35
34
34
33
33
33
33
32
Osaka
10
11
14
20
25
28
32
34
30
24
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Bangkok
27
28
29
30
31
30
30
30
29
29
29
28
Osaka
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Bangkok
18
22
43
92
221
187
184
227
331
276
42
7
Osaka
47
61
103
103
136
185
175
113
146
140
73
56
Daylight, hours per day
Bangkok
11
12
12
12
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
Osaka
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Bangkok
8
8
8
8
7
5
5
4
4
5
7
8
Osaka
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bangkok: 1991-2020 normals, Bangkok (5.7 km from centre). Osaka: 1991-2020 normals, Osaka (1.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBangkokOsaka
SeoulICN, GMP
5 h 0 m
€175-251
BKK · 26 km
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 38 km
TokyoHND, NRT
6 h 5 m
€318-365
BKK · 26 km
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 11 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
4 h 5 m
€176-184
BKK · 26 km
2 h 10 m
€237-303
KIX · 38 km
Hong KongHKG
2 h 40 m
€175-181
BKK · 26 km
3 h 35 m
€254-314
KIX · 38 km
SapporoCTS, OKD
6 h 35 m
no fares
DMK · 21 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
KaohsiungKHH
3 h 20 m
no fares
DMK · 21 km
3 h 0 m
€181-306
KIX · 38 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
2 h 20 m
€163-194
BKK · 26 km
6 h 25 m
no fares
KIX · 38 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 55 m
€438-523
BKK · 26 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
16 h 20 m
€646-679
1 stop
BKK · 26 km
11 h 30 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€409-425
DMK · 21 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
KIX · 38 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 2026-09 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

MeasureBangkokOsaka
Official languageThaiJapanese
CurrencyBaht (THB)Yen (JPY)
SocketsABCF220 V, 50 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC+7UTC+9
Emergency numberPolice 191, ambulance 1669, fire 199Police 110, fire 119
Elevation2 m20 m
Main airportSuvarnabhumi Airport (BKK)26 km from centre142 non-stop destinationsKansai International Airport (KIX)38 km from centre62 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days

By the numbers

MeasureBangkokOsaka
City population5,676,6482,751,862
People per km²3,61912,340
Museums within 10 km5943
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km06
Distinct cuisines in the centre9197
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bangkok or Osaka 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). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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.