VacationSelector

Kyoto or Malaga?

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, 1 point apart

Kyoto
58
match

Wins on nightlife and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Malaga
59
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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.

KyotoMalaga
Beaches & swimming. Malaga leads by 49 points.49
KyotoMalaga
Score1766
Swim season months53
Beaches 10 km021
Coast distance47 km0 km
Water distance47 km0 km
Places to eat. Kyoto leads by 15 points.15
KyotoMalaga
Score8469
Restaurants within 2 km of centre5,0231,002
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2234
Museums & heritage. Kyoto leads by 19 points.19
KyotoMalaga
Score7253
Museums within 10 km13240
Museums within 2 km of centre5135
Share of museums within 2 km %3988
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Kyoto leads by 26 points.26
KyotoMalaga
Score8054
Drinking venues within 4 km3,215715
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,363486
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7368
Nightclubs within 4 km2645
Nature & day trips. Malaga leads by 21 points.21
KyotoMalaga
Score2243
Protected land share 50 km %27
Landscape blanket share 50 km %20
Land share of disc %10063
Park area within 2 km45 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Kyoto leads by 13 points.13
KyotoMalaga
Score6653
Tourist attractions within 2 km6233
Park area within 2 km45 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km40
Sights concentration. Kyoto leads by 15 points.15
KyotoMalaga
Score5237
Notable places within 2 km7933
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Malaga leads by 1 points.1
KyotoMalaga
Score7071
Price level global62.460.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Malaga leads by 20 points.20
KyotoMalaga
Score6282
Monthly daytime high8.6 °C to 32.4 °C17.2 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall40 mm to 232 mm0 mm to 88 mm
Dry months05
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
Malaga
17
18
20
22
25
29
31
32
28
24
20
18
Sea temperature, °C
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Malaga
15
15
15
16
18
20
22
23
22
20
17
16
Rainfall, mm
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
Malaga
62
55
66
41
23
4
0
3
25
60
78
88
Daylight, hours per day
Kyoto
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Malaga
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Kyoto
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5
Malaga
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
5

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). Malaga: 1991-2020 normals, Malaga / Aeropuerto (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromKyotoMalaga
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
2 h 25 m
€92
AGP · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 30 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
2 h 55 m
€146-177
AGP · 9 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
11 h 30 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
2 h 50 m
€133-149
AGP · 9 km
CopenhagenCPH
10 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
3 h 35 m
€107-122
AGP · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 30 m
€1,507-1966
2 stops
ITM · 39 km
2 h 50 m
€124-199
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
12 h 5 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
2 h 30 m
€59-73
AGP · 9 km
HelsinkiHEL
9 h 45 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
4 h 35 m
€198-239
2 stops
AGP · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
10 h 55 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
4 h 5 m
€185-196
AGP · 9 km
Abu DhabiAUH
9 h 40 m
€810-860
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
7 h 25 m
no fares
AGP · 9 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

MeasureKyotoMalaga
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 m18 m
Main airportKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinationsMálaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP)9 km from centre165 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureKyotoMalaga
City population1,463,723599,063
People per km²1,7681,517
Museums within 10 km7632
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre8965
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months3 months

Where else could you go?

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