VacationSelector

Barcelona or Tokyo?

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

Your match

Barcelona
✓ Best match
71
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Tokyo
66
match

Wins on nightlife and nature & day trips 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.

BarcelonaTokyo
Beaches & swimming. Barcelona leads by 44 points.44
BarcelonaTokyo
Score6521
Swim season months34
Beaches 10 km201
Coast distance2 km5 km
Water distance2 km5 km
Places to eat. Barcelona and Tokyo are level on 90.
BarcelonaTokyo
Score9090
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,7866,936
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4125
Museums & heritage. Barcelona leads by 2 points.2
BarcelonaTokyo
Score6866
Museums within 10 km105302
Museums within 2 km of centre4952
Share of museums within 2 km %4717
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Tokyo leads by 13 points.13
BarcelonaTokyo
Score8295
Drinking venues within 4 km2,7116,895
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,6413,033
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6144
Nightclubs within 4 km24558
Nature & day trips. Tokyo leads by 8 points.8
BarcelonaTokyo
Score5058
Protected land share 50 km %10
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5185
Park area within 2 km49 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Tokyo leads by 6 points.6
BarcelonaTokyo
Score6571
Tourist attractions within 2 km6040
Park area within 2 km49 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km39
Sights concentration. Barcelona leads by 13 points.13
BarcelonaTokyo
Score7360
Notable places within 2 km258121
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Barcelona leads by 1 points.1
BarcelonaTokyo
Score7170
Price level global60.862.4
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Barcelona leads by 14 points.14
BarcelonaTokyo
Score7864
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 28.9 °C10 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 83 mm57 mm to 237 mm
Dry months50
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
Barcelona
14
14
16
19
22
26
28
29
26
22
18
15
Tokyo
10
11
14
19
24
26
30
32
28
22
17
12
Sea temperature, °C
Barcelona
14
13
13
14
17
21
24
25
24
21
17
15
Tokyo
14
13
13
15
18
21
23
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Barcelona
41
32
40
47
44
27
27
51
83
82
45
36
Tokyo
60
57
117
134
140
168
157
155
221
237
97
58
Daylight, hours per day
Barcelona
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Tokyo
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Barcelona
5
5
7
8
8
9
10
9
7
6
4
4
Tokyo
6
6
6
6
6
4
5
6
4
4
5
6

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Barcelona: 1991-2020 normals, Barcelona / Aeropuerto (14.4 km from centre). Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBarcelonaTokyo
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€37-96
BCN · 13 km
11 h 55 m
€820-907
1 stop
HND · 18 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 55 m
€459-799
2 stops
BCN · 13 km
2 h 10 m
€124-187
NRT · 56 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€79-101
BCN · 13 km
12 h 5 m
€835-923
HND · 18 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
12 h 15 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
2 h 45 m
€296-314
HND · 18 km
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
€114-118
BCN · 13 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
NRT · 56 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 40 m
€54-89
BCN · 13 km
12 h 20 m
no fares
HND · 18 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 30 m
€33-92
BCN · 13 km
12 h 10 m
no fares
HND · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 55 m
€562-701
BCN · 13 km
13 h 30 m
€813-1004
HND · 18 km
DohaDOH
6 h 25 m
€282-445
2 stops
BCN · 13 km
10 h 25 m
€931-1048
1 stop
HND · 18 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
11 h 50 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
13 h 55 m
no fares
NRT · 56 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

MeasureBarcelonaTokyo
Official languageSpanishJapanese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yen (JPY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number112Police 110, fire 119
Elevation9 m6 m
Main airportJosep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN)13 km from centre229 non-stop destinationsTokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureBarcelonaTokyo
City population1,731,64914,264,798
People per km²17,0946,501
Museums within 10 km95191
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre128125
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Barcelona or Tokyo 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.