VacationSelector

New York or Sydney?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

New York
66
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife with your weighting.

Sydney
64
match

Wins on year-round weather and nature & day trips 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.

New YorkSydney
Beaches & swimming. New York leads by 4 points.4
New YorkSydney
Score6460
Swim season months36
Beaches 10 km17160
Coast distance1 km7 km
Water distance1 km7 km
Places to eat. New York leads by 17 points.17
New YorkSydney
Score9578
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6,0322,205
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3831
Museums & heritage. New York leads by 9 points.9
New YorkSydney
Score6051
Museums within 10 km11944
Museums within 2 km of centre3120
Share of museums within 2 km %2645
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. New York leads by 14 points.14
New YorkSydney
Score8975
Drinking venues within 4 km4,1592,050
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,0151,405
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4869
Nightclubs within 4 km192120
Nature & day trips. Sydney leads by 19 points.19
New YorkSydney
Score3958
Protected land share 50 km %410
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6952
Park area within 2 km134 hectares115 hectares
Good for families. New York leads by 8 points.8
New YorkSydney
Score7264
Tourist attractions within 2 km3737
Park area within 2 km134 hectares115 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km72
Sights concentration. New York leads by 14 points.14
New YorkSydney
Score7460
Notable places within 2 km268123
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sydney leads by 7 points.7
New YorkSydney
Score4350
Price level global10090.2
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Sydney leads by 23 points.23
New YorkSydney
Score5881
Monthly daytime high4.5 °C to 30.1 °C17.7 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall74 mm to 112 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
New York
5
6
10
16
22
27
30
29
25
19
13
7
Sydney
28
27
26
23
21
18
18
19
22
24
25
26
Sea temperature, °C
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
Sydney
23
23
23
22
21
20
19
18
18
19
20
21
Rainfall, mm
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
Sydney
80
116
90
95
89
121
70
63
57
55
71
68
Daylight, hours per day
New York
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sydney
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Sunshine, hours per day
New York
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. New York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre). Sydney: 1991-2020 normals, Sydney Airport (3.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromNew YorkSydney
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
5 h 20 m
€314-354
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
14 h 50 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€459-498
JFK · 21 km
20 h 40 m
€931-1073
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
TokyoHND, NRT
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 21 km
9 h 50 m
€671
SYD · 9 km
SeoulICN, GMP
13 h 45 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
10 h 30 m
€548-574
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
18 h 45 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
8 h 5 m
€498-549
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 20 m
€206-234
LGA · 13 km
19 h 0 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 20 m
€201-385
LGA · 13 km
16 h 55 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 30 m
€445-517
JFK · 21 km
20 h 35 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
DohaDOH
13 h 20 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
15 h 15 m
€997-1100
SYD · 9 km
SantiagoSCL
10 h 20 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
14 h 0 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

MeasureNew YorkSydney
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
Elevation25 m6 m
Main airportJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinationsSydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (SYD)9 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureNew YorkSydney
City population8,804,1905,450,496
People per km²7,256449
Museums within 10 km15738
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre13279
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months6 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow New York 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.