VacationSelector

London or Sydney?

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, level with your weighting

London
64
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Sydney
64
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

LondonSydney
Beaches & swimming. Sydney leads by 60 points.60
LondonSydney
Score060
Swim season months06
Beaches 10 km47160
Coast distance43 km7 km
Water distance7 km
Places to eat. London leads by 10 points.10
LondonSydney
Score8878
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,3172,205
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4031
Museums & heritage. London leads by 21 points.21
LondonSydney
Score7251
Museums within 10 km14844
Museums within 2 km of centre4920
Share of museums within 2 km %3345
Unesco sites within 50 km42
Nightlife. London leads by 20 points.20
LondonSydney
Score9575
Drinking venues within 4 km5,3272,050
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,4431,405
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4669
Nightclubs within 4 km312120
Nature & day trips. Sydney leads by 18 points.18
LondonSydney
Score4058
Protected land share 50 km %1610
Landscape blanket share 50 km %140
Land share of disc %9752
Park area within 2 km84 hectares115 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 11 points.11
LondonSydney
Score7564
Tourist attractions within 2 km8537
Park area within 2 km84 hectares115 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. London leads by 29 points.29
LondonSydney
Score8960
Notable places within 2 km649123
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. London leads by 4 points.4
LondonSydney
Score5450
Price level global84.990.2
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Sydney leads by 18 points.18
LondonSydney
Score6381
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 23.8 °C17.7 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 67 mm55 mm to 121 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
Sydney
28
27
26
23
21
18
18
19
22
24
25
26
Sea temperature, °C
London
No coastline within reach
Sydney
23
23
23
22
21
20
19
18
18
19
20
21
Rainfall, mm
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Sydney
80
116
90
95
89
121
70
63
57
55
71
68
Daylight, hours per day
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sydney
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Sunshine, hours per day
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
2
2
Sydney
8
6
7
7
7
6
7
8
8
8
7
8

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). Sydney: 1991-2020 normals, Sydney Airport (3.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLondonSydney
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 5 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
10 h 30 m
€548-574
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 0 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
14 h 50 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
13 h 30 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
8 h 5 m
€498-549
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 30 m
€665-831
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
9 h 55 m
€539-575
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
Hong KongHKG
12 h 0 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
9 h 20 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 55 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
9 h 50 m
€671
SYD · 9 km
Ho Chi Minh CitySGN
12 h 40 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
8 h 45 m
€404-717
SYD · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 5 m
€92-144
LHR · 23 km
20 h 35 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
DohaDOH
6 h 50 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
15 h 15 m
€997-1100
SYD · 9 km
SantiagoSCL
14 h 25 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
SYD · 9 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

MeasureLondonSydney
Official languageEnglishEnglish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Australian Dollar (AUD)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzI230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+10, UTC+11 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999000
Elevation4 m6 m
Main airportLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinationsSydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (SYD)9 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLondonSydney
City population8,799,7285,450,496
People per km²5,598449
Museums within 10 km21538
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km42
Distinct cuisines in the centre11679
Swim season, months above 21 °C6 months

Where else could you go?

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