VacationSelector

London or Lyon?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

London
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration with your weighting.

Lyon
52
match

Wins on value for money and year-round weather 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.

LondonLyon
Beaches & swimming. London and Lyon are level on 0.
LondonLyon
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km4726
Coast distance43 km253 km
Water distance
Places to eat. London leads by 9 points.9
LondonLyon
Score8879
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,3171,691
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4040
Museums & heritage. London leads by 17 points.17
LondonLyon
Score7255
Museums within 10 km14853
Museums within 2 km of centre4925
Share of museums within 2 km %3347
Unesco sites within 50 km42
Nightlife. London leads by 37 points.37
LondonLyon
Score9558
Drinking venues within 4 km5,327866
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,443611
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4671
Nightclubs within 4 km31247
Nature & day trips. London leads by 7 points.7
LondonLyon
Score4033
Protected land share 50 km %166
Landscape blanket share 50 km %146
Land share of disc %97100
Park area within 2 km84 hectares120 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 16 points.16
LondonLyon
Score7559
Tourist attractions within 2 km8525
Park area within 2 km84 hectares120 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. London leads by 35 points.35
LondonLyon
Score8954
Notable places within 2 km64986
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lyon leads by 8 points.8
LondonLyon
Score5462
Price level global84.973.7
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Lyon leads by 1 points.1
LondonLyon
Score6364
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 23.8 °C7 °C to 28 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 67 mm43 mm to 101 mm
Dry months10
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
London
8
9
12
15
18
22
24
23
20
16
11
9
Lyon
7
9
14
17
21
26
28
28
23
18
11
8
Rainfall, mm
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Daylight, hours per day
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Lyon
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
2
2
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
6
4
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre). Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLondonLyon
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 5 m
€92-144
LHR · 23 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€61-144
LGW · 40 km
1 h 20 m
€70-92
LYS · 20 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 35 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
3 h 0 m
€167-217
LYS · 20 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
€124-216
LHR · 23 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 5 m
€146-170
LHR · 23 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
€79-116
LGW · 40 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 20 m
€128-183
1 stop
LGW · 40 km
2 h 55 m
€105-126
LYS · 20 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 35 m
€119-292
1 stop
LGW · 40 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
6 h 50 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
7 h 35 m
€446-565
1 stop
LYS · 20 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 30 m
€665-831
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
GVA · 111 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

MeasureLondonLyon
Official languageEnglishFrench
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation4 m160 m
Main airportLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinationsLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLondonLyon
City population8,799,728519,127
People per km²5,59810,838
Museums within 10 km21542
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km42
Distinct cuisines in the centre116148

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow London or Lyon 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. 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.