VacationSelector

Kyoto or Paris?

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 value for money with your weighting.

Paris
✓ Best match
67
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

KyotoParis
Beaches & swimming. Kyoto leads by 17 points.17
KyotoParis
Score170
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km02
Coast distance47 km149 km
Water distance47 km
Places to eat. Paris leads by 6 points.6
KyotoParis
Score8490
Restaurants within 2 km of centre5,0234,732
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2233
Museums & heritage. Paris leads by 4 points.4
KyotoParis
Score7276
Museums within 10 km132185
Museums within 2 km of centre5165
Share of museums within 2 km %3935
Unesco sites within 50 km44
Nightlife. Paris leads by 8 points.8
KyotoParis
Score8088
Drinking venues within 4 km3,2153,796
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,3631,694
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7345
Nightclubs within 4 km26201
Nature & day trips. Paris leads by 26 points.26
KyotoParis
Score2248
Protected land share 50 km %228
Landscape blanket share 50 km %226
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km45 hectares82 hectares
Good for families. Paris leads by 9 points.9
KyotoParis
Score6675
Tourist attractions within 2 km6289
Park area within 2 km45 hectares82 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km43
Sights concentration. Paris leads by 42 points.42
KyotoParis
Score5294
Notable places within 2 km79865
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Kyoto leads by 8 points.8
KyotoParis
Score7062
Price level global62.473.7
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Paris leads by 4 points.4
KyotoParis
Score6266
Monthly daytime high8.6 °C to 32.4 °C7.8 °C to 26 °C
Monthly rainfall40 mm to 232 mm38 mm to 75 mm
Dry months01
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
Paris
8
9
13
17
20
24
26
26
22
17
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Paris
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
Paris
45
38
41
45
75
51
58
54
51
55
54
62
Daylight, hours per day
Kyoto
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Paris
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
Paris
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). Paris: 1991-2020 normals, Paris-Montsouris (4.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromKyotoParis
SeoulICN, GMP
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 81 km
11 h 10 m
€509-719
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
TokyoHND, NRT
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 39 km
12 h 5 m
€705-999
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
7 h 30 m
€579-648
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
1 h 5 m
€63-103
CDG · 22 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
2 h 10 m
€237-303
KIX · 81 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
CDG · 22 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 30 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
11 h 25 m
€687-789
CDG · 22 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
5 h 35 m
€288-317
KIX · 81 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
CDG · 22 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
9 h 35 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
6 h 50 m
€292-389
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
10 h 55 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
3 h 15 m
€152-378
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 30 m
€1,507-1966
2 stops
ITM · 39 km
1 h 10 m
€122-134
CDG · 22 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

MeasureKyotoParis
Official languageJapaneseFrench
CurrencyYen (JPY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the regionCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+9UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, fire 119112
Elevation51 m27 m
Main airportKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinationsCharles de Gaulle International Airport (CDG)22 km from centre277 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureKyotoParis
City population1,463,7232,103,778
People per km²1,76819,960
Museums within 10 km76251
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km44
Distinct cuisines in the centre89169
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 Paris 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.