VacationSelector

Lyon or Sao Paulo?

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

Your match

Lyon
52
match

Wins on museums & heritage and places to eat with your weighting.

Sao Paulo
✓ Best match
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.

LyonSao Paulo
Beaches & swimming. Lyon and Sao Paulo are level on 0.
LyonSao Paulo
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km260
Coast distance253 km51 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Lyon leads by 6 points.6
LyonSao Paulo
Score7973
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,6911,735
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4027
Museums & heritage. Lyon leads by 12 points.12
LyonSao Paulo
Score5543
Museums within 10 km5382
Museums within 2 km of centre2526
Share of museums within 2 km %4732
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Sao Paulo leads by 14 points.14
LyonSao Paulo
Score5872
Drinking venues within 4 km8661,747
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre611896
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7151
Nightclubs within 4 km47118
Nature & day trips. Sao Paulo leads by 18 points.18
LyonSao Paulo
Score3351
Protected land share 50 km %626
Landscape blanket share 50 km %615
Land share of disc %10095
Park area within 2 km120 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. Lyon leads by 4 points.4
LyonSao Paulo
Score5955
Tourist attractions within 2 km2538
Park area within 2 km120 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Lyon leads by 4 points.4
LyonSao Paulo
Score5450
Notable places within 2 km8668
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sao Paulo leads by 19 points.19
LyonSao Paulo
Score6281
Price level global73.746.1
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Sao Paulo leads by 19 points.19
LyonSao Paulo
Score6483
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 28 °C22.8 °C to 29.2 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 101 mm26 mm to 297 mm
Dry months01
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
Lyon
7
9
14
17
21
26
28
28
23
18
11
8
Sao Paulo
28
29
28
27
24
23
23
25
25
27
27
28
Rainfall, mm
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Sao Paulo
297
259
206
89
64
55
53
26
82
128
146
234
Daylight, hours per day
Lyon
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sao Paulo
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
6
4
3
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. Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre). Sao Paulo: 1991-2020 normals, Sao Paulo (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLyonSao Paulo
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€167-217
LYS · 20 km
13 h 5 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
MadridMAD
1 h 45 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
10 h 30 m
€739-741
GRU · 21 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 20 m
€109-165
LYS · 20 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 20 m
€195-211
2 stops
LYS · 20 km
12 h 10 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
PortoOPO
2 h 5 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
10 h 15 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 20 m
€70-92
LYS · 20 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 111 km
9 h 40 m
€576-611
GRU · 21 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 111 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

MeasureLyonSao Paulo
Official languageFrenchPortuguese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Brazilian Real (BRL)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCN60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-3
Emergency number112Police 190, ambulance 192, fire 193
Elevation160 m760 m
Main airportLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinationsSão Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU)21 km from centre102 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureLyonSao Paulo
City population519,12711,451,999
People per km²10,8387,519
Museums within 10 km4290
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre14859

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lyon 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.