VacationSelector
The Esplanade boardwalk and its palms, Cairns
CairnsThe Esplanade boardwalk and its palms
The pagoda at Kiyomizu-dera, Kyoto
KyotoThe pagoda at Kiyomizu-dera

Photos: Cairns by Donaldytong, Public domain; Kyoto by Bert Mulder, Pexels License.

Cairns or Kyoto?

Our verdict in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities, and the climate month by month, so you can choose for your trip.

Choose Cairns for

  • beaches
  • nature and the outdoors
  • nightlife

What lies behind each score is written up on Cairns’s own page.

Choose Kyoto for

  • culture and sights
  • day trips
  • food and drink

What lies behind each score is written up on Kyoto’s own page.

Scoreboard

Twelve categories on one fixed scale from 0 to 100. The shaded stretch is the gap between the two.

Beaches & swimming. Cairns 62, Kyoto 15: Cairns leads by 47 points.
Food & drink. Cairns 40, Kyoto 85: Kyoto leads by 45 points.
Culture & sights. Cairns 22, Kyoto 96: Kyoto leads by 74 points.
Nightlife. Cairns 42, Kyoto 35: Cairns leads by 7 points.
Nature & outdoors. Cairns 95, Kyoto 70: Cairns leads by 25 points.
Day trips. Cairns 45, Kyoto 96: Kyoto leads by 51 points.
Good for families. Cairns 66, Kyoto 68: Kyoto leads by 2 points.
Getting around. Cairns 45, Kyoto 72: Kyoto leads by 27 points.
Shopping & style. Cairns 28, Kyoto 72: Kyoto leads by 44 points.
Affordability. Cairns 35, Kyoto 50: Kyoto leads by 15 points.
Live music & performing arts. Cairns 22, Kyoto 60: Kyoto leads by 38 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Cairns 45, Kyoto 70: Kyoto leads by 25 points.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Cairns and Kyoto.

Your match

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders, and both match scores follow your weighting.

Cairns
46match

Wins on beaches and nature and the outdoors with your weighting.

Kyoto
Best match
66match

Wins on culture and sights and day trips with your weighting.

What matters to you?

When should you go?

Pick your month. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Cairns in July

24 °Cdaytime high
20 °Cnight-time low
30 mmrain in the month
No recordsunshine a day
24 °Csea
11 hdaylight a day

Kyoto in July

31 °Cdaytime high
23 °Cnight-time low
225 mmrain in the month
6 hsunshine a day
25 °Csea
14 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

0200400600JFMAMJJASOND
CairnsKyoto

Where the figures come from

Cairns's temperatures are measured 27 km from the centre, at Green Island Aws.

Cairns has no rain gauge within 25 km of the centre, so its rainfall comes from a gridded climate dataset read at the city rather than from a gauge further away.

Kyoto's sunshine is measured 43 km from the centre, at Osaka.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cairns: 1993-2010 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Green Island Aws (27 km from centre). Kyoto: 1971-2000 (sunshine 1991-2020) normals, Kyoto (3.2 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureCairnsKyoto
Official languageEnglishJapanese
CurrencyAustralian Dollar (AUD)Yen (JPY)
SocketsI230 V, 50 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC+10UTC+9
Emergency number000Police 110, fire 119
Elevation7 m51 m
Main airportCairns International Airport (CNS)6 km from centre32 non-stop destinationsKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureCairnsKyoto
City population146,7781,463,723
People per km²3011,768
Museums within 10 km177
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km14
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 Cairns or Kyoto somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Rainfall where no rain gauge is within 25 km is from the TerraClimate 1991-2020 climatology (Abatzoglou et al. 2018, Scientific Data), read at the city. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-11-01. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.