VacationSelector

Cairo or Kyoto?

Two destinations compared in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

The pyramids of Giza, Cairo
Cairo

Photo: Ricardo Liberato, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped

The pagoda at Kiyomizu-dera, Kyoto
Kyoto

Photo: Bert Mulder, Pexels License

Your match

Cairo
50
match

Wins on prices and nightlife with your weighting.

Kyoto
✓ Best match
66
match

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

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Our verdict on each category, scored 0 to 100 against fixed benchmark cities.

CairoKyoto
Beaches & swimming. Kyoto leads by 5 points.5
Food & drink. Kyoto leads by 25 points.25
Culture & sights. Cairo and Kyoto are level on 96.
Nightlife. Cairo leads by 13 points.13
Nature & outdoors. Kyoto leads by 40 points.40
Day trips. Kyoto leads by 30 points.30
Good for families. Kyoto leads by 36 points.36
Getting around. Kyoto leads by 37 points.37
Shopping & style. Kyoto leads by 14 points.14
Affordability. Cairo leads by 45 points.45
Live music & performing arts. Kyoto leads by 10 points.10
Wellness & relaxation. Kyoto leads by 55 points.55
0255075100

What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Cairo and Kyoto.

When should you go?

Pick the month you can travel and see both cities side by side. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Climate figures for July
JulyCairoKyoto
Daytime high36 °C31 °C
Night-time low23 °C23 °C
Rainfall in the month0 mm225 mm
Sunshine12 hours a day6 hours a day
Sea temperatureNo sea25 °C
Daylight14 hours a day14 hours a day

The whole year

Each row is shaded against that destination’s own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that figure 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
Cairo
19
21
24
29
33
35
36
36
34
30
26
21
Kyoto
9
9
13
20
24
27
31
32
28
22
17
11
Sea temperature, °C
Cairo
No coastline within reach
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Cairo
6
5
10
1
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
7
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
Daylight, hours per day
Cairo
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
12
11
10
Kyoto
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Cairo
7
7
9
9
11
11
12
11
10
10
9
7
Kyoto
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5

Where the figures come from

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

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cairo: 1991-2020 normals, Helwan (21.9 km from centre). Kyoto: 1971-2000 (sunshine 1991-2020) normals, Kyoto (3.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCairoKyoto
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 55 m
no fares
CAI · 17 km
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 39 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
10 h 30 m
no fares
CAI · 17 km
2 h 10 m
€237-303
KIX · 81 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
4 h 25 m
€249-480
CAI · 17 km
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 10 m
€154-167
CAI · 17 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 30 m
€644-746
1 stop
CAI · 17 km
2 h 45 m
€327-334
KIX · 81 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
4 h 50 m
€240-288
CAI · 17 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
Abu DhabiAUH
3 h 30 m
€191-269
1 stop
CAI · 17 km
9 h 40 m
€810-860
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
4 h 5 m
€245-328
1 stop
CAI · 17 km
11 h 30 m
€1,507-1966
2 stops
ITM · 39 km
RomeFCO, CIA
3 h 10 m
€280-302
CAI · 17 km
12 h 5 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
11 h 15 m
€624-1013
1 stop
CAI · 17 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 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

MeasureCairoKyoto
Official languageArabicJapanese
CurrencyEgyptian Pound (EGP)Yen (JPY)
SocketsCF220 V, 50 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+9
Emergency numberPolice 122, ambulance 123, fire 180Police 110, fire 119
Elevation23 m51 m
Main airportCairo International Airport (CAI)17 km from centre127 non-stop destinationsKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureCairoKyoto
City population9,801,5361,463,723
People per km²18,5641,768
Museums within 10 km4876
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km24
Swim season, months above 21 °C-5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cairo 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. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate and flight figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-10-27. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.