VacationSelector

Manila or Sydney?

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

Your match

Manila
60
match

Wins on value for money and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Sydney
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on nature & day trips and places to eat 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.

ManilaSydney
Beaches & swimming. Manila leads by 16 points.16
ManilaSydney
Score7660
Swim season months126
Beaches 10 km3160
Coast distance2 km7 km
Water distance2 km7 km
Places to eat. Sydney leads by 20 points.20
ManilaSydney
Score5878
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0152,205
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1731
Museums & heritage. Sydney leads by 1 points.1
ManilaSydney
Score5051
Museums within 10 km7744
Museums within 2 km of centre2320
Share of museums within 2 km %3045
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Sydney leads by 14 points.14
ManilaSydney
Score6175
Drinking venues within 4 km1,0822,050
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre3741,405
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3569
Nightclubs within 4 km36120
Nature & day trips. Sydney leads by 29 points.29
ManilaSydney
Score2958
Protected land share 50 km %410
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7852
Park area within 2 km54 hectares115 hectares
Good for families. Sydney leads by 4 points.4
ManilaSydney
Score6064
Tourist attractions within 2 km3737
Park area within 2 km54 hectares115 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Sydney leads by 8 points.8
ManilaSydney
Score5260
Notable places within 2 km79123
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Manila leads by 40 points.40
ManilaSydney
Score9050
Price level global33.790.2
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Sydney leads by 20 points.20
ManilaSydney
Score6181
Monthly daytime high30.5 °C to 34.6 °C17.7 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall24 mm to 564 mm55 mm to 121 mm
Dry months40
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
Manila
31
31
33
35
34
33
32
31
31
32
31
31
Sydney
28
27
26
23
21
18
18
19
22
24
25
26
Sea temperature, °C
Manila
27
27
28
29
30
30
29
29
29
29
28
28
Sydney
23
23
23
22
21
20
19
18
18
19
20
21
Rainfall, mm
Manila
26
24
40
36
220
314
487
564
509
297
152
109
Sydney
80
116
90
95
89
121
70
63
57
55
71
68
Daylight, hours per day
Manila
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
Sydney
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Manila
No sunshine record
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. Manila: 1991-2020 normals, Science Garden (6 km from centre). Sydney: 1991-2020 normals, Sydney Airport (3.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromManilaSydney
TokyoHND, NRT
4 h 10 m
€304-317
MNL · 11 km
9 h 50 m
€671
SYD · 9 km
SeoulICN, GMP
3 h 45 m
€191-223
MNL · 11 km
10 h 30 m
€548-574
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
3 h 30 m
€154-174
MNL · 11 km
8 h 5 m
€498-549
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
Hong KongHKG
2 h 0 m
€128-135
MNL · 11 km
9 h 20 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
Denpasar (Bali)DPS
3 h 50 m
€345-396
MNL · 11 km
6 h 5 m
€460-617
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
Ho Chi Minh CitySGN
2 h 35 m
€142-175
MNL · 11 km
8 h 45 m
€404-717
SYD · 9 km
Kuala LumpurKUL, SZB
3 h 35 m
€159-184
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
8 h 25 m
€419-457
SYD · 9 km
DohaDOH
9 h 15 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
15 h 15 m
€997-1100
SYD · 9 km
San FranciscoSFO
13 h 55 m
€628-629
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
14 h 45 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
13 h 20 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
20 h 35 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 2026-09 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

MeasureManilaSydney
Official languageEnglish, Filipino, TaglishEnglish
CurrencyPhilippine Peso (PHP)Australian Dollar (AUD)
SocketsABC220 V, 60 HzI230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+10, UTC+11 in summer
Emergency number911000
Elevation9 m6 m
Main airportNinoy Aquino International Airport (MNL)11 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsSydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (SYD)9 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year18 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureManilaSydney
City population1,902,5905,450,496
People per km²76,104449
Museums within 10 km2738
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre3979
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months6 months

Where else could you go?

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