VacationSelector

Lima or Sao Paulo?

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

Lima
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Sao Paulo
56
match

Wins on nightlife 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.

LimaSao Paulo
Beaches & swimming. Lima leads by 37 points.37
LimaSao Paulo
Score370
Swim season months20
Beaches 10 km120
Coast distance6 km51 km
Water distance6 km
Places to eat. Sao Paulo leads by 21 points.21
LimaSao Paulo
Score5273
Restaurants within 2 km of centre7961,735
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1427
Museums & heritage. Lima leads by 21 points.21
LimaSao Paulo
Score6443
Museums within 10 km8982
Museums within 2 km of centre4726
Share of museums within 2 km %5332
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Sao Paulo leads by 27 points.27
LimaSao Paulo
Score4572
Drinking venues within 4 km4091,747
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre177896
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4351
Nightclubs within 4 km63118
Nature & day trips. Sao Paulo leads by 24 points.24
LimaSao Paulo
Score2751
Protected land share 50 km %226
Landscape blanket share 50 km %015
Land share of disc %5195
Park area within 2 km54 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. Lima leads by 1 points.1
LimaSao Paulo
Score5655
Tourist attractions within 2 km2538
Park area within 2 km54 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Sao Paulo leads by 4 points.4
LimaSao Paulo
Score4650
Notable places within 2 km5468
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sao Paulo leads by 1 points.1
LimaSao Paulo
Score8081
Price level global47.746.1
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Lima leads by 9 points.9
LimaSao Paulo
Score9283
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 27.4 °C22.8 °C to 29.2 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 1 mm26 mm to 297 mm
Dry months121
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
Lima
26
27
27
25
22
20
19
19
19
20
22
24
Sao Paulo
28
29
28
27
24
23
23
25
25
27
27
28
Sea temperature, °C
Lima
21
22
21
20
19
18
18
17
17
17
18
19
Sao Paulo
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Lima
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
Sao Paulo
297
259
206
89
64
55
53
26
82
128
146
234
Daylight, hours per day
Lima
13
13
12
12
12
11
12
12
12
12
13
13
Sao Paulo
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Lima
5
5
6
6
3
1
1
1
1
2
3
4
Sao Paulo
4
6
6
5
5
5
6
6
5
6
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lima: 1991-2020 normals, Lima-Callao / Aerop. Internacional Jorgechavez (10.9 km from centre). Sao Paulo: 1991-2020 normals, Sao Paulo (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLimaSao Paulo
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
4 h 25 m
€256
LIM · 9 km
2 h 40 m
€281-355
GRU · 21 km
SantiagoSCL
3 h 35 m
€181-198
LIM · 9 km
3 h 45 m
€255-300
GRU · 21 km
MadridMAD
11 h 50 m
€895-903
LIM · 9 km
10 h 30 m
€739-741
GRU · 21 km
Rio de JaneiroGIG, SDU, RRJ
5 h 5 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
1 h 5 m
€190-227
GRU · 21 km
BogotaBOG
2 h 55 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
5 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
Punta CanaPUJ
4 h 50 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
6 h 50 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
9 h 40 m
€576-611
GRU · 21 km
BrasiliaBSB
4 h 25 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
1 h 40 m
€232-237
CGH · 9 km
CuritibaCWB
4 h 30 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
1 h 5 m
€137-215
GRU · 21 km
Porto AlegrePOA
4 h 35 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
1 h 40 m
€227-296
GRU · 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 2026-09 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

MeasureLimaSao Paulo
Official languageSpanish, Aymara, QuechuaPortuguese
CurrencySol (PEN)Brazilian Real (BRL)
SocketsABC220 V, 60 HzCN60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5UTC-3
Emergency number111 or 911Police 190, ambulance 192, fire 193
Elevation154 m760 m
Main airportJorge Chávez International Airport (LIM)9 km from centre63 non-stop destinationsSão Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU)21 km from centre102 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureLimaSao Paulo
City population9,943,80011,451,999
People per km²3,7217,519
Museums within 10 km4690
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre3359
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lima or Sao Paulo 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. 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). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.