VacationSelector

Heidelberg or Kyoto?

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

Your match

Heidelberg
45
match

Wins on nature & day trips with your weighting.

Kyoto
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat 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.

HeidelbergKyoto
Beaches & swimming. Kyoto leads by 17 points.17
HeidelbergKyoto
Score017
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km60
Coast distance406 km47 km
Water distance47 km
Places to eat. Kyoto leads by 37 points.37
HeidelbergKyoto
Score4784
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2695,023
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2622
Museums & heritage. Kyoto leads by 13 points.13
HeidelbergKyoto
Score5972
Museums within 10 km54132
Museums within 2 km of centre2351
Share of museums within 2 km %4339
Unesco sites within 50 km44
Nightlife. Kyoto leads by 53 points.53
HeidelbergKyoto
Score2780
Drinking venues within 4 km2013,215
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1692,363
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8473
Nightclubs within 4 km826
Nature & day trips. Heidelberg leads by 52 points.52
HeidelbergKyoto
Score7422
Protected land share 50 km %522
Landscape blanket share 50 km %222
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km20 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. Kyoto leads by 23 points.23
HeidelbergKyoto
Score4366
Tourist attractions within 2 km2962
Park area within 2 km20 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km14
Sights concentration. Kyoto leads by 16 points.16
HeidelbergKyoto
Score3652
Notable places within 2 km3179
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Kyoto leads by 10 points.10
HeidelbergKyoto
Score6070
Price level global75.962.4
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Kyoto leads by 1 points.1
HeidelbergKyoto
Score6162
Monthly daytime high5.2 °C to 25.8 °C8.6 °C to 32.4 °C
Monthly rainfall45 mm to 80 mm40 mm to 232 mm
Dry months00
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
Heidelberg
5
7
12
17
21
24
26
26
21
15
9
6
Kyoto
9
9
13
20
24
27
31
32
28
22
17
11
Sea temperature, °C
Heidelberg
No coastline within reach
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Heidelberg
46
46
53
45
69
66
80
67
56
61
62
64
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
Daylight, hours per day
Heidelberg
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Kyoto
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Heidelberg
2
3
4
6
7
7
8
7
6
4
2
1
Kyoto
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Heidelberg: 1991-2020 normals, Heidelberg (4.5 km from centre). Kyoto: 1971-2000 (sunshine 1991-2020) normals, Kyoto (3.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHeidelbergKyoto
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 45 m
€490-632
1 stop
FRA · 69 km
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 81 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 40 m
no fares
FRA · 69 km
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 39 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 5 m
€693-750
3 stops
FRA · 69 km
2 h 10 m
€237-303
KIX · 81 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 25 m
€74-124
FRA · 69 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 15 m
€570-612
1 stop
FRA · 69 km
5 h 35 m
€288-317
KIX · 81 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 55 m
€537-713
FRA · 69 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
12 h 45 m
no fares
FRA · 69 km
6 h 25 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
HamburgHAM, XFW, LBC
1 h 10 m
€147-192
1 stop
FRA · 69 km
11 h 5 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€139-148
FRA · 69 km
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 20 m
€296-339
1 stop
FRA · 69 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
KIX · 81 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 2026-09 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

MeasureHeidelbergKyoto
Official languageGermanJapanese
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
Elevation114 m51 m
Main airportFrankfurt Main Airport (FRA)69 km from centre293 non-stop destinationsKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureHeidelbergKyoto
City population162,9601,463,723
People per km²1,4961,768
Museums within 10 km1776
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km44
Distinct cuisines in the centre4589
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Heidelberg or Kyoto 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). 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. 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.

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.