VacationSelector

Kuala Lumpur or Manila?

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, 2 points apart

Kuala Lumpur
62
match

Wins on nature & day trips and places to eat with your weighting.

Manila
60
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

Kuala LumpurManila
Beaches & swimming. Manila leads by 36 points.36
Kuala LumpurManila
Score4076
Swim season months1212
Beaches 10 km03
Coast distance38 km2 km
Water distance36 km2 km
Places to eat. Kuala Lumpur leads by 20 points.20
Kuala LumpurManila
Score7858
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,3581,015
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2817
Museums & heritage. Kuala Lumpur leads by 1 points.1
Kuala LumpurManila
Score5150
Museums within 10 km4177
Museums within 2 km of centre2623
Share of museums within 2 km %6330
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Kuala Lumpur leads by 6 points.6
Kuala LumpurManila
Score6761
Drinking venues within 4 km1,3081,082
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre735374
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5635
Nightclubs within 4 km12636
Nature & day trips. Kuala Lumpur leads by 40 points.40
Kuala LumpurManila
Score6929
Protected land share 50 km %284
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %9778
Park area within 2 km70 hectares54 hectares
Good for families. Kuala Lumpur and Manila are level on 60.
Kuala LumpurManila
Score6060
Tourist attractions within 2 km2637
Park area within 2 km70 hectares54 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km53
Sights concentration. Manila leads by 1 points.1
Kuala LumpurManila
Score5152
Notable places within 2 km7579
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Kuala Lumpur leads by 2 points.2
Kuala LumpurManila
Score9290
Price level global30.633.7
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Manila leads by 9 points.9
Kuala LumpurManila
Score5261
Monthly daytime high31.9 °C to 33.7 °C30.5 °C to 34.6 °C
Monthly rainfall145 mm to 360 mm24 mm to 564 mm
Dry months04
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
Kuala Lumpur
33
33
34
34
34
33
33
33
33
33
32
32
Manila
31
31
33
35
34
33
32
31
31
32
31
31
Sea temperature, °C
Kuala Lumpur
29
29
30
30
30
30
30
30
30
30
29
29
Manila
27
27
28
29
30
30
29
29
29
29
28
28
Rainfall, mm
Kuala Lumpur
227
197
270
296
232
145
169
178
215
284
360
281
Manila
26
24
40
36
220
314
487
564
509
297
152
109
Daylight, hours per day
Kuala Lumpur
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
Manila
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Kuala Lumpur: 1991-2020 normals, Sepang/KL International Airport (46.1 km from centre). Manila: 1991-2020 normals, Science Garden (6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromKuala LumpurManila
TokyoHND, NRT
7 h 0 m
no fares
KUL · 45 km
4 h 10 m
€304-317
MNL · 11 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
1 h 0 m
€89-104
KUL · 45 km
3 h 30 m
€154-174
MNL · 11 km
Hong KongHKG
3 h 40 m
€193-209
KUL · 45 km
2 h 0 m
€128-135
MNL · 11 km
JakartaCGK, HLP
2 h 0 m
€112-141
KUL · 45 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
SeoulICN, GMP
6 h 5 m
€251-273
KUL · 45 km
3 h 45 m
€191-223
MNL · 11 km
HanoiHAN
3 h 10 m
€158-166
KUL · 45 km
2 h 45 m
€182-214
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
5 h 10 m
€203-227
KUL · 45 km
2 h 50 m
€210-218
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
Ho Chi Minh CitySGN
1 h 55 m
€116-133
KUL · 45 km
2 h 35 m
€142-175
MNL · 11 km
RiyadhRUH
8 h 10 m
no fares
KUL · 45 km
9 h 50 m
€435-460
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
12 h 55 m
no fares
KUL · 45 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
MNL · 11 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

MeasureKuala LumpurManila
Official languageMalayEnglish, Filipino, Taglish
CurrencyMalaysian Ringgit (MYR)Philippine Peso (PHP)
SocketsG240 V, 50 HzABC220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+8
Emergency number999911
Elevation50 m9 m
Main airportKuala Lumpur International Airport (KUL)45 km from centre136 non-stop destinationsNinoy Aquino International Airport (MNL)11 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year18 days

By the numbers

MeasureKuala LumpurManila
City population9,000,2801,902,590
People per km²36,93276,104
Museums within 10 km2527
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre6939
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Kuala Lumpur or Manila 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). 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. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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.