VacationSelector

Kuala Lumpur or Tromso?

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

Your match

Kuala Lumpur
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on nightlife and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Tromso
27
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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 LumpurTromso
Beaches & swimming. Tromso leads by 12 points.12
Kuala LumpurTromso
Score4052
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km014
Coast distance38 km0 km
Water distance36 km0 km
Places to eat. Kuala Lumpur leads by 54 points.54
Kuala LumpurTromso
Score7824
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,35885
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2816
Museums & heritage. Kuala Lumpur leads by 28 points.28
Kuala LumpurTromso
Score5123
Museums within 10 km4110
Museums within 2 km of centre268
Share of museums within 2 km %6380
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Kuala Lumpur leads by 60 points.60
Kuala LumpurTromso
Score677
Drinking venues within 4 km1,30867
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre73561
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5691
Nightclubs within 4 km1265
Nature & day trips. Kuala Lumpur leads by 58 points.58
Kuala LumpurTromso
Score6911
Protected land share 50 km %289
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %9765
Park area within 2 km70 hectares7 hectares
Good for families. Kuala Lumpur leads by 46 points.46
Kuala LumpurTromso
Score6014
Tourist attractions within 2 km269
Park area within 2 km70 hectares7 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km50
Sights concentration. Kuala Lumpur leads by 23 points.23
Kuala LumpurTromso
Score5128
Notable places within 2 km7520
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Kuala Lumpur leads by 38 points.38
Kuala LumpurTromso
Score9254
Price level global30.685.1
Daily budget—€203
Year-round weather. Kuala Lumpur leads by 19 points.19
Kuala LumpurTromso
Score5233
Monthly daytime high31.9 °C to 33.7 °C-1.1 °C to 16.3 °C
Monthly rainfall145 mm to 360 mm56 mm to 128 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
Kuala Lumpur
33
33
34
34
34
33
33
33
33
33
32
32
Tromso
-1
-1
1
4
9
13
16
15
11
5
2
0
Sea temperature, °C
Kuala Lumpur
29
29
30
30
30
30
30
30
30
30
29
29
Tromso
5
5
4
4
6
8
10
11
10
9
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Kuala Lumpur
227
197
270
296
232
145
169
178
215
284
360
281
Tromso
108
95
97
71
56
57
73
90
110
128
94
110
Daylight, hours per day
Kuala Lumpur
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
Tromso
2
7
12
16
22
24
24
18
14
9
4
0
Sunshine, hours per day
Kuala Lumpur
No sunshine record
Tromso
0
1
3
6
8
8
8
6
3
2
0
0

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). Tromso: 1991-2020 normals, Tromso (0.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromKuala LumpurTromso
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
13 h 10 m
€471-602
KUL · 45 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
12 h 55 m
no fares
KUL · 45 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
AmsterdamAMS
12 h 45 m
no fares
KUL · 45 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
TOS · 4 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

MeasureKuala LumpurTromso
Official languageMalayNorwegian, Nynorsk, Bokmål, Sámi
CurrencyMalaysian Ringgit (MYR)Norwegian Krone (NOK)
SocketsG240 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number999Police 112, ambulance 113, fire 110
Elevation50 m20 m
Main airportKuala Lumpur International Airport (KUL)45 km from centre136 non-stop destinationsTromsø Airport (TOS)4 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year–12 days

By the numbers

MeasureKuala LumpurTromso
City population9,000,28079,943
People per km²36,93232
Museums within 10 km258
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre6923
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Kuala Lumpur or Tromso 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.