VacationSelector

Manila or Tokyo?

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 beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Tokyo
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife 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.

ManilaTokyo
Beaches & swimming. Manila leads by 55 points.55
ManilaTokyo
Score7621
Swim season months124
Beaches 10 km31
Coast distance2 km5 km
Water distance2 km5 km
Places to eat. Tokyo leads by 32 points.32
ManilaTokyo
Score5890
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0156,936
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1725
Museums & heritage. Tokyo leads by 16 points.16
ManilaTokyo
Score5066
Museums within 10 km77302
Museums within 2 km of centre2352
Share of museums within 2 km %3017
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Tokyo leads by 34 points.34
ManilaTokyo
Score6195
Drinking venues within 4 km1,0826,895
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre3743,033
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3544
Nightclubs within 4 km3658
Nature & day trips. Tokyo leads by 29 points.29
ManilaTokyo
Score2958
Protected land share 50 km %4
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7885
Park area within 2 km54 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Tokyo leads by 11 points.11
ManilaTokyo
Score6071
Tourist attractions within 2 km3740
Park area within 2 km54 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km39
Sights concentration. Tokyo leads by 8 points.8
ManilaTokyo
Score5260
Notable places within 2 km79121
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Manila leads by 20 points.20
ManilaTokyo
Score9070
Price level global33.762.4
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Tokyo leads by 3 points.3
ManilaTokyo
Score6164
Monthly daytime high30.5 °C to 34.6 °C10 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall24 mm to 564 mm57 mm to 237 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
Tokyo
10
11
14
19
24
26
30
32
28
22
17
12
Sea temperature, °C
Manila
27
27
28
29
30
30
29
29
29
29
28
28
Tokyo
14
13
13
15
18
21
23
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Manila
26
24
40
36
220
314
487
564
509
297
152
109
Tokyo
60
57
117
134
140
168
157
155
221
237
97
58
Daylight, hours per day
Manila
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
Tokyo
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Manila
No sunshine record
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. Manila: 1991-2020 normals, Science Garden (6 km from centre). Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromManilaTokyo
SeoulICN, GMP
3 h 45 m
€191-223
MNL · 11 km
2 h 10 m
€124-187
NRT · 56 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
2 h 50 m
€210-218
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
2 h 45 m
€296-314
HND · 18 km
Hong KongHKG
2 h 0 m
€128-135
MNL · 11 km
4 h 10 m
€255-268
NRT · 56 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
3 h 15 m
€205-213
MNL · 11 km
6 h 10 m
€318-337
NRT · 56 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
3 h 30 m
€154-174
MNL · 11 km
6 h 55 m
€353-477
1 stop
HND · 18 km
OsakaKIX, ITM, UKB
3 h 45 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
1 h 10 m
€106-119
HND · 18 km
Kuala LumpurKUL, SZB
3 h 35 m
€159-184
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
7 h 0 m
€368-391
1 stop
NRT · 56 km
San FranciscoSFO
13 h 55 m
€628-629
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
10 h 25 m
€755-991
1 stop
HND · 18 km
DohaDOH
9 h 15 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
10 h 25 m
€931-1048
1 stop
HND · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
13 h 20 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
12 h 5 m
€835-923
HND · 18 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

MeasureManilaTokyo
Official languageEnglish, Filipino, TaglishJapanese
CurrencyPhilippine Peso (PHP)Yen (JPY)
SocketsABC220 V, 60 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+9
Emergency number911Police 110, fire 119
Elevation9 m6 m
Main airportNinoy Aquino International Airport (MNL)11 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsTokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year18 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureManilaTokyo
City population1,902,59014,264,798
People per km²76,1046,501
Museums within 10 km27191
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre39125
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months4 months

Where else could you go?

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