VacationSelector

Beijing or Toronto?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Beijing
53
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Toronto
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration 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.

BeijingToronto
Beaches & swimming. Toronto leads by 43 points.43
BeijingToronto
Score043
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km058
Coast distance145 km533 km
Water distance5 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Museums & heritage. Beijing leads by 20 points.20
BeijingToronto
Score6343
Museums within 10 km9535
Museums within 2 km of centre1525
Share of museums within 2 km %1671
Unesco sites within 50 km60
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Nature & day trips. Beijing leads by 9 points.9
BeijingToronto
Score3526
Protected land share 50 km %32
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km143 hectares68 hectares
Good for families. Beijing leads by 20 points.20
BeijingToronto
Score7757
Tourist attractions within 2 km4123
Park area within 2 km143 hectares68 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km124
Sights concentration. Toronto leads by 11 points.11
BeijingToronto
Score5061
Notable places within 2 km69128
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Beijing leads by 25 points.25
BeijingToronto
Score7954
Price level global4984
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Beijing leads by 11 points.11
BeijingToronto
Score6655
Monthly daytime high2.2 °C to 31.8 °C-0.2 °C to 27.4 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 163 mm51 mm to 85 mm
Dry months80
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
Toronto
0
0
5
12
19
24
27
26
22
15
8
2
Sea temperature, °C
Beijing
No coastline within reach
Toronto
4
3
3
4
7
15
20
21
19
13
8
5
Rainfall, mm
Beijing
3
6
9
23
38
74
163
112
56
27
14
3
Toronto
62
58
51
74
58
85
83
69
62
75
65
66
Daylight, hours per day
Beijing
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Toronto
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Beijing
6
6
7
8
9
7
6
7
7
7
6
6
Toronto
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). Toronto: 1991-2020 normals, Toronto City (1.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBeijingToronto
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
1 h 55 m
€144-160
PKX · 45 km
14 h 5 m
no fares
YYZ · 20 km
SeoulICN, GMP
1 h 45 m
€180-197
PKX · 45 km
13 h 10 m
no fares
YYZ · 20 km
Hong KongHKG
2 h 55 m
€151-190
PKX · 45 km
15 h 25 m
no fares
YYZ · 20 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
13 h 45 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 20 m
€183-189
YYZ · 20 km
GuangzhouCAN
2 h 50 m
€184-282
PKX · 45 km
15 h 20 m
no fares
YYZ · 20 km
TokyoHND, NRT
3 h 10 m
€312-367
PEK · 25 km
12 h 50 m
no fares
YYZ · 20 km
DublinDUB
10 h 25 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
6 h 50 m
no fares
YYZ · 20 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 15 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
7 h 25 m
€443-479
1 stop
YYZ · 20 km
DohaDOH
7 h 55 m
€595-787
3 stops
PKX · 45 km
13 h 30 m
no fares
YYZ · 20 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
21 h 20 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
YYZ · 20 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

MeasureBeijingToronto
Official languagePutonghuaFrench, English
CurrencyYuan Renminbi (CNY)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsACI220 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, ambulance 120, fire 119911
Elevation43 m76 m
Main airportBeijing Capital International Airport (PEK)25 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsToronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ)20 km from centre189 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year6 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBeijingToronto
City population21,893,0952,794,356
People per km²1,3344,434
Museums within 10 km8332
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km60
Distinct cuisines in the centre29102
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Beijing or Toronto 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.