VacationSelector

Kyoto or Madrid?

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

Your match

Kyoto
58
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nature & day trips and sights concentration 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.

KyotoMadrid
Beaches & swimming. Kyoto leads by 17 points.17
KyotoMadrid
Score170
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km04
Coast distance47 km305 km
Water distance47 km—
Places to eat. Kyoto leads by 1 points.1
KyotoMadrid
Score8483
Restaurants within 2 km of centre5,0233,508
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2228
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 3 points.3
KyotoMadrid
Score7275
Museums within 10 km13297
Museums within 2 km of centre5159
Share of museums within 2 km %3961
Unesco sites within 50 km44
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 1 points.1
KyotoMadrid
Score8081
Drinking venues within 4 km3,2152,414
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,3631,498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7362
Nightclubs within 4 km26341
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 41 points.41
KyotoMadrid
Score2263
Protected land share 50 km %219
Landscape blanket share 50 km %20
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km45 hectares187 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 11 points.11
KyotoMadrid
Score6677
Tourist attractions within 2 km6261
Park area within 2 km45 hectares187 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km43
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 23 points.23
KyotoMadrid
Score5275
Notable places within 2 km79288
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 1 points.1
KyotoMadrid
Score7071
Price level global62.460.8
Daily budget—€122
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 10 points.10
KyotoMadrid
Score6272
Monthly daytime high8.6 °C to 32.4 °C10 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall40 mm to 232 mm9 mm to 64 mm
Dry months07
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
Kyoto
9
9
13
20
24
27
31
32
28
22
17
11
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Sea temperature, °C
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Daylight, hours per day
Kyoto
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Kyoto
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Kyoto: 1971-2000 (sunshine 1991-2020) normals, Kyoto (3.2 km from centre). Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromKyotoMadrid
SeoulICN, GMP
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 81 km
12 h 25 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
TokyoHND, NRT
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 39 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
2 h 10 m
€237-303
KIX · 81 km
12 h 45 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
12 h 5 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
5 h 35 m
€288-317
KIX · 81 km
12 h 40 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 30 m
€1,507-1966
2 stops
ITM · 39 km
2 h 20 m
€121-231
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
DohaDOH
10 h 0 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 14 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

MeasureKyotoMadrid
Official languageJapaneseSpanish
CurrencyYen (JPY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the regionCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+9UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, fire 119112
Elevation51 m663 m
Main airportKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureKyotoMadrid
City population1,463,7233,506,730
People per km²1,7685,801
Museums within 10 km7688
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km44
Distinct cuisines in the centre89106
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 Kyoto or Madrid 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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). 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.