VacationSelector
The pagoda at Kiyomizu-dera, Kyoto
KyotoThe pagoda at Kiyomizu-dera
The lighthouse in the Paphos Archaeological Park, Paphos
PaphosThe lighthouse in the Paphos Archaeological Park

Photos: Kyoto by Bert Mulder, Pexels License; Paphos by Nikodem Nijaki, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped.

Kyoto or Paphos?

Our verdict in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities, and the climate month by month, so you can choose for your trip.

Choose Kyoto for

  • shopping
  • food and drink
  • live music and the arts

What lies behind each score is written up on Kyoto’s own page.

Choose Paphos for

  • beaches
  • nightlife
  • prices

What lies behind each score is written up on Paphos’s own page.

Scoreboard

Twelve categories on one fixed scale from 0 to 100. The shaded stretch is the gap between the two.

Beaches & swimming. Kyoto 15, Paphos 76: Paphos leads by 61 points.
Food & drink. Kyoto 85, Paphos 45: Kyoto leads by 40 points.
Culture & sights. Kyoto 96, Paphos 62: Kyoto leads by 34 points.
Nightlife. Kyoto 35, Paphos 38: Paphos leads by 3 points.
Nature & outdoors. Kyoto and Paphos are level on 70.
Day trips. Kyoto 96, Paphos 64: Kyoto leads by 32 points.
Good for families. Kyoto and Paphos are level on 68.
Getting around. Kyoto 72, Paphos 40: Kyoto leads by 32 points.
Shopping & style. Kyoto 72, Paphos 25: Kyoto leads by 47 points.
Affordability. Kyoto 50, Paphos 52: Paphos leads by 2 points.
Live music & performing arts. Kyoto 60, Paphos 22: Kyoto leads by 38 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Kyoto 70, Paphos 42: Kyoto leads by 28 points.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Kyoto and Paphos.

Your match

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders, and both match scores follow your weighting.

Kyoto
Best match
66match

Wins on shopping and food and drink with your weighting.

Paphos
50match

Wins on beaches and nightlife with your weighting.

What matters to you?

When should you go?

Pick your month. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Kyoto in July

31 °Cdaytime high
23 °Cnight-time low
225 mmrain in the month
6 hsunshine a day
25 °Csea
14 hdaylight a day

Paphos in July

30 °Cdaytime high
21 °Cnight-time low
1 mmrain in the month
No recordsunshine a day
27 °Csea
14 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

050100150200250JFMAMJJASOND
KyotoPaphos

Where the figures come from

Kyoto's sunshine is measured 43 km from the centre, at Osaka.

Paphos has no rain gauge within 25 km of the centre, so its rainfall comes from a gridded climate dataset read at the city rather than from a gauge further away.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Kyoto: 1971-2000 (sunshine 1991-2020) normals, Kyoto (3.2 km from centre). Paphos: 1991-2020 normals, Paphos Airport (8.4 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureKyotoPaphos
Official languageJapaneseTurkish, Greek, Modern Greek
CurrencyYen (JPY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the regionG240 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC+9UTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, fire 119112
Elevation51 m72 m
Main airportKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinationsPaphos International Airport (PFO)8 km from centre58 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days17 days

By the numbers

MeasureKyotoPaphos
City population1,463,72335,961
People per km²1,7681,987
Museums within 10 km774
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km42
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months6 months

Where else could you go?

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

Browse every destination

Sources

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. Rainfall where no rain gauge is within 25 km is from the TerraClimate 1991-2020 climatology (Abatzoglou et al. 2018, Scientific Data), read at the city. 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.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-10-31. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.