VacationSelector

Miami or Sydney?

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

Your match

Miami
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Sydney
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nightlife 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.

MiamiSydney
Beaches & swimming. Miami leads by 35 points.35
MiamiSydney
Score9560
Swim season months126
Beaches 10 km20160
Coast distance1 km7 km
Water distance1 km7 km
Places to eat. Sydney leads by 13 points.13
MiamiSydney
Score6578
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8982,205
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2931
Museums & heritage. Sydney leads by 28 points.28
MiamiSydney
Score2351
Museums within 10 km2844
Museums within 2 km of centre620
Share of museums within 2 km %2145
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. Sydney leads by 25 points.25
MiamiSydney
Score5075
Drinking venues within 4 km5382,050
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2871,405
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5369
Nightclubs within 4 km63120
Nature & day trips. Miami leads by 14 points.14
MiamiSydney
Score7258
Protected land share 50 km %1610
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4852
Park area within 2 km50 hectares115 hectares
Good for families. Sydney leads by 20 points.20
MiamiSydney
Score4464
Tourist attractions within 2 km1437
Park area within 2 km50 hectares115 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Sydney leads by 18 points.18
MiamiSydney
Score4260
Notable places within 2 km45123
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sydney leads by 7 points.7
MiamiSydney
Score4350
Price level global10090.2
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Sydney leads by 7 points.7
MiamiSydney
Score7481
Monthly daytime high24.7 °C to 32.7 °C17.7 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 267 mm55 mm to 121 mm
Dry months00
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
Miami
25
26
27
29
31
32
33
33
32
30
28
26
Sydney
28
27
26
23
21
18
18
19
22
24
25
26
Sea temperature, °C
Miami
25
25
25
26
27
28
29
30
29
28
27
26
Sydney
23
23
23
22
21
20
19
18
18
19
20
21
Rainfall, mm
Miami
47
55
63
85
157
267
186
242
259
193
90
62
Sydney
80
116
90
95
89
121
70
63
57
55
71
68
Daylight, hours per day
Miami
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Sydney
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Miami
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. Miami: 1991-2020 normals, Miami International Airport (10 km from centre). Sydney: 1991-2020 normals, Sydney Airport (3.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMiamiSydney
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 45 m
€205-247
MIA · 7 km
19 h 30 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
9 h 0 m
€550-628
1 stop
MIA · 7 km
20 h 40 m
€931-1073
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
2 h 30 m
€103-188
1 stop
MIA · 7 km
16 h 55 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
5 h 5 m
no fares
MIA · 7 km
14 h 50 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 0 m
€202-362
MIA · 7 km
19 h 0 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 45 m
€144-205
MIA · 7 km
16 h 55 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
SantiagoSCL
8 h 30 m
no fares
MIA · 7 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
DohaDOH
15 h 10 m
no fares
MIA · 7 km
15 h 15 m
€997-1100
SYD · 9 km
San FranciscoSFO
5 h 35 m
no fares
MIA · 7 km
14 h 45 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
6 h 0 m
no fares
MIA · 7 km
15 h 20 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

MeasureMiamiSydney
Official languageEnglish
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Australian Dollar (AUD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzI230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+10, UTC+11 in summer
Emergency number911000
Elevation2 m6 m
Main airportMiami International Airport (MIA)7 km from centre199 non-stop destinationsSydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (SYD)9 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMiamiSydney
City population442,2415,450,496
People per km²3,046449
Museums within 10 km1738
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
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 Miami 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.