VacationSelector

Beijing or Paris?

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

Your match

Beijing
53
match

Wins on value for money and good for families with your weighting.

Paris
✓ Best match
67
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage 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.

BeijingParis
Beaches & swimming. Beijing and Paris are level on 0.
BeijingParis
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km02
Coast distance145 km149 km
Water distance
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Museums & heritage. Paris leads by 13 points.13
BeijingParis
Score6376
Museums within 10 km95185
Museums within 2 km of centre1565
Share of museums within 2 km %1635
Unesco sites within 50 km64
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Nature & day trips. Paris leads by 13 points.13
BeijingParis
Score3548
Protected land share 50 km %328
Landscape blanket share 50 km %026
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km143 hectares82 hectares
Good for families. Beijing leads by 2 points.2
BeijingParis
Score7775
Tourist attractions within 2 km4189
Park area within 2 km143 hectares82 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km123
Sights concentration. Paris leads by 44 points.44
BeijingParis
Score5094
Notable places within 2 km69865
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Beijing leads by 17 points.17
BeijingParis
Score7962
Price level global4973.7
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Beijing and Paris are level on 66.
BeijingParis
Score6666
Monthly daytime high2.2 °C to 31.8 °C7.8 °C to 26 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 163 mm38 mm to 75 mm
Dry months81
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
Beijing
2
6
13
21
27
31
32
31
27
19
10
4
Paris
8
9
13
17
20
24
26
26
22
17
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Beijing
3
6
9
23
38
74
163
112
56
27
14
3
Paris
45
38
41
45
75
51
58
54
51
55
54
62
Daylight, hours per day
Beijing
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Paris
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Beijing
6
6
7
8
9
7
6
7
7
7
6
6
Paris
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Beijing: 1991-2020 normals, Beijing (11.1 km from centre). Paris: 1991-2020 normals, Paris-Montsouris (4.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBeijingParis
SeoulICN, GMP
1 h 45 m
€180-197
PKX · 45 km
11 h 10 m
€509-719
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
1 h 55 m
€144-160
PKX · 45 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
CDG · 22 km
ChengduTFU, CTU
2 h 25 m
€217-253
PKX · 45 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
CDG · 22 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 15 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 5 m
€63-103
CDG · 22 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
9 h 0 m
€475-645
PEK · 25 km
3 h 15 m
€152-378
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
TokyoHND, NRT
3 h 10 m
€312-367
PEK · 25 km
12 h 5 m
€705-999
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
10 h 10 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 20 m
€61-89
CDG · 22 km
DohaDOH
7 h 55 m
€595-787
3 stops
PKX · 45 km
6 h 30 m
€425-436
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
13 h 5 m
€1,020-1172
2 stops
PEK · 25 km
7 h 45 m
€445-510
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
21 h 20 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
11 h 45 m
€806-1124
CDG · 22 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

MeasureBeijingParis
Official languagePutonghuaFrench
CurrencyYuan Renminbi (CNY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsACI220 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, ambulance 120, fire 119112
Elevation43 m27 m
Main airportBeijing Capital International Airport (PEK)25 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsCharles de Gaulle International Airport (CDG)22 km from centre277 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year6 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBeijingParis
City population21,893,0952,103,778
People per km²1,33419,960
Museums within 10 km83251
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km64
Distinct cuisines in the centre29169

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Beijing or Paris 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. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.