VacationSelector

London or Sao Paulo?

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 museums & heritage with your weighting.

Sao Paulo
56
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.

LondonSao Paulo
Beaches & swimming. London and Sao Paulo are level on 0.
LondonSao Paulo
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km470
Coast distance43 km51 km
Water distance
Places to eat. London leads by 15 points.15
LondonSao Paulo
Score8873
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,3171,735
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4027
Museums & heritage. London leads by 29 points.29
LondonSao Paulo
Score7243
Museums within 10 km14882
Museums within 2 km of centre4926
Share of museums within 2 km %3332
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. London leads by 23 points.23
LondonSao Paulo
Score9572
Drinking venues within 4 km5,3271,747
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,443896
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4651
Nightclubs within 4 km312118
Nature & day trips. Sao Paulo leads by 11 points.11
LondonSao Paulo
Score4051
Protected land share 50 km %1626
Landscape blanket share 50 km %1415
Land share of disc %9795
Park area within 2 km84 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 20 points.20
LondonSao Paulo
Score7555
Tourist attractions within 2 km8538
Park area within 2 km84 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. London leads by 39 points.39
LondonSao Paulo
Score8950
Notable places within 2 km64968
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sao Paulo leads by 27 points.27
LondonSao Paulo
Score5481
Price level global84.946.1
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Sao Paulo leads by 20 points.20
LondonSao Paulo
Score6383
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 23.8 °C22.8 °C to 29.2 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 67 mm26 mm to 297 mm
Dry months11
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
Sao Paulo
28
29
28
27
24
23
23
25
25
27
27
28
Rainfall, mm
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Sao Paulo
297
259
206
89
64
55
53
26
82
128
146
234
Daylight, hours per day
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sao Paulo
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Sunshine, hours per day
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
2
2
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. London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre). Sao Paulo: 1991-2020 normals, Sao Paulo (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLondonSao Paulo
Rio de JaneiroGIG, SDU, RRJ
11 h 35 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
1 h 5 m
€190-227
GRU · 21 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
€124-216
LHR · 23 km
10 h 30 m
€739-741
GRU · 21 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
9 h 40 m
€576-611
GRU · 21 km
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
13 h 45 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
2 h 40 m
€281-355
GRU · 21 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€61-144
LGW · 40 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 45 m
€83-138
LGW · 40 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
SantiagoSCL
14 h 25 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
3 h 45 m
€255-300
GRU · 21 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 5 m
€92-144
LHR · 23 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
JohannesburgJNB, HLA
11 h 20 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
9 h 25 m
€445-559
GRU · 21 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 15 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
21 h 20 m
€1,139-1567
2 stops
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 2026-08 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

MeasureLondonSao Paulo
Official languageEnglishPortuguese
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Brazilian Real (BRL)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCN60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC-3
Emergency number112 or 999Police 190, ambulance 192, fire 193
Elevation4 m760 m
Main airportLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinationsSão Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU)21 km from centre102 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureLondonSao Paulo
City population8,799,72811,451,999
People per km²5,5987,519
Museums within 10 km21590
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre11659

Where else could you go?

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