VacationSelector

Malaga or Tokyo?

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

Your match

Malaga
59
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Tokyo
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration 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.

MalagaTokyo
Beaches & swimming. Malaga leads by 45 points.45
MalagaTokyo
Score6621
Swim season months34
Beaches 10 km211
Coast distance0 km5 km
Water distance0 km5 km
Places to eat. Tokyo leads by 21 points.21
MalagaTokyo
Score6990
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0026,936
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3425
Museums & heritage. Tokyo leads by 13 points.13
MalagaTokyo
Score5366
Museums within 10 km40302
Museums within 2 km of centre3552
Share of museums within 2 km %8817
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Tokyo leads by 41 points.41
MalagaTokyo
Score5495
Drinking venues within 4 km7156,895
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre4863,033
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6844
Nightclubs within 4 km4558
Nature & day trips. Tokyo leads by 15 points.15
MalagaTokyo
Score4358
Protected land share 50 km %7
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6385
Park area within 2 km85 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Tokyo leads by 18 points.18
MalagaTokyo
Score5371
Tourist attractions within 2 km3340
Park area within 2 km85 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km09
Sights concentration. Tokyo leads by 23 points.23
MalagaTokyo
Score3760
Notable places within 2 km33121
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Malaga leads by 1 points.1
MalagaTokyo
Score7170
Price level global60.862.4
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Malaga leads by 18 points.18
MalagaTokyo
Score8264
Monthly daytime high17.2 °C to 31.5 °C10 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 88 mm57 mm to 237 mm
Dry months50
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
Malaga
17
18
20
22
25
29
31
32
28
24
20
18
Tokyo
10
11
14
19
24
26
30
32
28
22
17
12
Sea temperature, °C
Malaga
15
15
15
16
18
20
22
23
22
20
17
16
Tokyo
14
13
13
15
18
21
23
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Malaga
62
55
66
41
23
4
0
3
25
60
78
88
Tokyo
60
57
117
134
140
168
157
155
221
237
97
58
Daylight, hours per day
Malaga
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Tokyo
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Malaga
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
5
Tokyo
6
6
6
6
6
4
5
6
4
4
5
6

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Malaga: 1991-2020 normals, Malaga / Aeropuerto (8.2 km from centre). Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMalagaTokyo
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 9 km
11 h 55 m
€820-907
1 stop
HND · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€92
AGP · 9 km
12 h 5 m
€835-923
HND · 18 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 55 m
€146-177
AGP · 9 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
NRT · 56 km
MadridMAD
1 h 10 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
NRT · 56 km
HelsinkiHEL
4 h 35 m
€198-239
2 stops
AGP · 9 km
9 h 50 m
€1,071-1283
1 stop
HND · 18 km
CopenhagenCPH
3 h 35 m
€107-122
AGP · 9 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
HND · 18 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
4 h 15 m
€112-120
AGP · 9 km
10 h 15 m
no fares
HND · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€124-199
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
11 h 40 m
€786-939
1 stop
HND · 18 km
DohaDOH
7 h 5 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
10 h 25 m
€931-1048
1 stop
HND · 18 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 25 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
12 h 50 m
no fares
NRT · 56 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

MeasureMalagaTokyo
Official languageSpanishJapanese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yen (JPY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number112Police 110, fire 119
Elevation18 m6 m
Main airportMálaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP)9 km from centre165 non-stop destinationsTokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureMalagaTokyo
City population599,06314,264,798
People per km²1,5176,501
Museums within 10 km32191
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre65125
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Malaga or Tokyo 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.