VacationSelector

Kyoto or Munich?

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 beaches & swimming and nightlife with your weighting.

Munich
57
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.

KyotoMunich
Beaches & swimming. Kyoto leads by 17 points.17
KyotoMunich
Score170
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km06
Coast distance47 km579 km
Water distance47 km
Places to eat. Kyoto leads by 11 points.11
KyotoMunich
Score8473
Restaurants within 2 km of centre5,0231,280
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2235
Museums & heritage. Kyoto leads by 11 points.11
KyotoMunich
Score7261
Museums within 10 km13274
Museums within 2 km of centre5148
Share of museums within 2 km %3965
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Kyoto leads by 13 points.13
KyotoMunich
Score8067
Drinking venues within 4 km3,2151,335
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,363763
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7357
Nightclubs within 4 km26103
Nature & day trips. Munich leads by 26 points.26
KyotoMunich
Score2248
Protected land share 50 km %217
Landscape blanket share 50 km %215
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km45 hectares199 hectares
Good for families. Munich leads by 13 points.13
KyotoMunich
Score6679
Tourist attractions within 2 km6280
Park area within 2 km45 hectares199 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km42
Sights concentration. Munich leads by 16 points.16
KyotoMunich
Score5268
Notable places within 2 km79196
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Kyoto leads by 10 points.10
KyotoMunich
Score7060
Price level global62.475.9
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Kyoto leads by 6 points.6
KyotoMunich
Score6256
Monthly daytime high8.6 °C to 32.4 °C4 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall40 mm to 232 mm46 mm to 121 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
Kyoto
9
9
13
20
24
27
31
32
28
22
17
11
Munich
4
6
10
15
19
23
25
25
20
15
8
5
Sea temperature, °C
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Munich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
Munich
52
46
61
56
107
121
119
117
78
67
58
59
Daylight, hours per day
Kyoto
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Munich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Kyoto
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5
Munich
2
3
5
6
7
7
8
8
6
4
2
2

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). Munich: 1991-2020 normals, München (1.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromKyotoMunich
SeoulICN, GMP
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 81 km
10 h 40 m
no fares
MUC · 29 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
1 h 45 m
€116-210
MUC · 29 km
HamburgHAM, XFW, LBC
11 h 5 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
1 h 20 m
€164-220
MUC · 29 km
TokyoHND, NRT
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 39 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
MUC · 29 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
5 h 35 m
€288-317
KIX · 81 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
MUC · 29 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
1 h 30 m
€183-250
MUC · 29 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
2 h 10 m
€237-303
KIX · 81 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
MUC · 29 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 30 m
€1,507-1966
2 stops
ITM · 39 km
1 h 0 m
€177-210
MUC · 29 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
8 h 15 m
no fares
MUC · 29 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
9 h 35 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
6 h 0 m
€292-332
MUC · 29 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

MeasureKyotoMunich
Official languageJapaneseGerman
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 m519 m
Main airportKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinationsMunich Airport (MUC)29 km from centre208 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureKyotoMunich
City population1,463,7231,510,378
People per km²1,7684,861
Museums within 10 km7674
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre8989
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 Munich 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.