VacationSelector

London or Manila?

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 sights concentration and nightlife with your weighting.

Manila
60
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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.

LondonManila
Beaches & swimming. Manila leads by 76 points.76
LondonManila
Score076
Swim season months012
Beaches 10 km473
Coast distance43 km2 km
Water distance2 km
Places to eat. London leads by 30 points.30
LondonManila
Score8858
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,3171,015
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4017
Museums & heritage. London leads by 22 points.22
LondonManila
Score7250
Museums within 10 km14877
Museums within 2 km of centre4923
Share of museums within 2 km %3330
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. London leads by 34 points.34
LondonManila
Score9561
Drinking venues within 4 km5,3271,082
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,443374
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4635
Nightclubs within 4 km31236
Nature & day trips. London leads by 11 points.11
LondonManila
Score4029
Protected land share 50 km %164
Landscape blanket share 50 km %140
Land share of disc %9778
Park area within 2 km84 hectares54 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 15 points.15
LondonManila
Score7560
Tourist attractions within 2 km8537
Park area within 2 km84 hectares54 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km33
Sights concentration. London leads by 37 points.37
LondonManila
Score8952
Notable places within 2 km64979
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Manila leads by 36 points.36
LondonManila
Score5490
Price level global84.933.7
Daily budget
Year-round weather. London leads by 2 points.2
LondonManila
Score6361
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 23.8 °C30.5 °C to 34.6 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 67 mm24 mm to 564 mm
Dry months14
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
Manila
31
31
33
35
34
33
32
31
31
32
31
31
Sea temperature, °C
London
No coastline within reach
Manila
27
27
28
29
30
30
29
29
29
29
28
28
Rainfall, mm
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Manila
26
24
40
36
220
314
487
564
509
297
152
109
Daylight, hours per day
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Manila
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
Sunshine, hours per day
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
2
2
Manila
No sunshine record

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). Manila: 1991-2020 normals, Science Garden (6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLondonManila
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 55 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
4 h 10 m
€304-317
MNL · 11 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 5 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
3 h 45 m
€191-223
MNL · 11 km
Hong KongHKG
12 h 0 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
2 h 0 m
€128-135
MNL · 11 km
Kuala LumpurKUL, SZB
13 h 10 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
3 h 35 m
€159-184
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 30 m
€665-831
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
2 h 50 m
€210-218
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
13 h 30 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
3 h 30 m
€154-174
MNL · 11 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 55 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
3 h 15 m
€205-213
MNL · 11 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 5 m
€92-144
LHR · 23 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
RiyadhRUH
6 h 30 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
9 h 50 m
€435-460
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
16 h 45 m
no fares
MNL · 11 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

MeasureLondonManila
Official languageEnglishEnglish, Filipino, Taglish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Philippine Peso (PHP)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzABC220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number112 or 999911
Elevation4 m9 m
Main airportLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinationsNinoy Aquino International Airport (MNL)11 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days18 days

By the numbers

MeasureLondonManila
City population8,799,7281,902,590
People per km²5,59876,104
Museums within 10 km21527
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre11639
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow London or Manila 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.