VacationSelector

Kyoto or New York?

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 value for money and museums & heritage with your weighting.

New York
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

KyotoNew York
Beaches & swimming. New York leads by 47 points.47
KyotoNew York
Score1764
Swim season months53
Beaches 10 km017
Coast distance47 km1 km
Water distance47 km1 km
Places to eat. New York leads by 11 points.11
KyotoNew York
Score8495
Restaurants within 2 km of centre5,0236,032
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2238
Museums & heritage. Kyoto leads by 12 points.12
KyotoNew York
Score7260
Museums within 10 km132119
Museums within 2 km of centre5131
Share of museums within 2 km %3926
Unesco sites within 50 km42
Nightlife. New York leads by 9 points.9
KyotoNew York
Score8089
Drinking venues within 4 km3,2154,159
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,3632,015
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7348
Nightclubs within 4 km26192
Nature & day trips. New York leads by 17 points.17
KyotoNew York
Score2239
Protected land share 50 km %24
Landscape blanket share 50 km %20
Land share of disc %10069
Park area within 2 km45 hectares134 hectares
Good for families. New York leads by 6 points.6
KyotoNew York
Score6672
Tourist attractions within 2 km6237
Park area within 2 km45 hectares134 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km47
Sights concentration. New York leads by 22 points.22
KyotoNew York
Score5274
Notable places within 2 km79268
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Kyoto leads by 27 points.27
KyotoNew York
Score7043
Price level global62.4100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Kyoto leads by 4 points.4
KyotoNew York
Score6258
Monthly daytime high8.6 °C to 32.4 °C4.5 °C to 30.1 °C
Monthly rainfall40 mm to 232 mm74 mm to 112 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
New York
5
6
10
16
22
27
30
29
25
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
Rainfall, mm
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
Daylight, hours per day
Kyoto
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
New York
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
New York
No sunshine record

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). New York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromKyotoNew York
SeoulICN, GMP
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 81 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
TokyoHND, NRT
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 39 km
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 21 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 30 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
5 h 20 m
€314-354
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
7 h 30 m
€445-517
JFK · 21 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
12 h 55 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
2 h 5 m
€236-237
LGA · 13 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
7 h 10 m
€459-498
JFK · 21 km
HonoluluHNL
8 h 25 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 30 m
€1,507-1966
2 stops
ITM · 39 km
7 h 55 m
€439-457
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
13 h 10 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
1 h 20 m
€206-234
LGA · 13 km
Abu DhabiAUH
9 h 40 m
€810-860
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
13 h 40 m
no fares
JFK · 21 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

MeasureKyotoNew York
Official languageJapanese
CurrencyYen (JPY)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the regionAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+9UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, fire 119911
Elevation51 m25 m
Main airportKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinationsJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureKyotoNew York
City population1,463,7238,804,190
People per km²1,7687,256
Museums within 10 km76157
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km42
Distinct cuisines in the centre89132
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 New York 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. 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.