VacationSelector

New York or Varanasi?

Two destinations compared in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Brooklyn Bridge and Lower Manhattan, New York
New York

Photo: Jakub Hałun, CC BY 4.0, cropped

Rowing boats below the ghats in the morning light, Varanasi
Varanasi

Photo: Dennis G. Jarvis, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped

Your match

New York
✓ Best match
71
match

Wins on nightlife and families with your weighting.

Varanasi
40
match

Wins on prices with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Our verdict on each category, scored 0 to 100 against fixed benchmark cities.

New YorkVaranasi
Beaches & swimming. New York leads by 46 points.46
Food & drink. New York leads by 37 points.37
Culture & sights. New York leads by 9 points.9
Nightlife. New York leads by 87 points.87
Nature & outdoors. New York leads by 37 points.37
Day trips. New York leads by 26 points.26
Good for families. New York leads by 65 points.65
Getting around. New York leads by 54 points.54
Shopping & style. New York leads by 42 points.42
Affordability. Varanasi leads by 80 points.80
Live music & performing arts. New York leads by 41 points.41
Wellness & relaxation. New York leads by 12 points.12
0255075100

What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: New York and Varanasi.

When should you go?

Pick the month you can travel and see both cities side by side. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Climate figures for July
JulyNew YorkVaranasi
Daytime high30 °C35 °C
Night-time low22 °C27 °C
Rainfall in the month107 mm249 mm
Sea temperature22 °CNo sea
Daylight15 hours a day14 hours a day

The whole year

Each row is shaded against that destination’s own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that figure 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
Varanasi
24
29
35
41
43
41
35
33
32
32
28
24
Sea temperature, °C
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
Varanasi
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
Varanasi
12
14
10
11
23
110
249
200
146
34
2
5
Daylight, hours per day
New York
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Varanasi
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11

Where the figures come from

Varanasi has no weather station within reach, so its figures come from a gridded climate model rather than a measured record, and read a broad area rather than the city itself.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. New York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre). Varanasi: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km.

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromNew YorkVaranasi
MumbaiBOM, NMI
15 h 25 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
2 h 10 m
€147-164
VNS · 21 km
New DelhiDEL
14 h 30 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
1 h 25 m
€121-127
VNS · 21 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 2026-10 to 2026-12, 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 YorkVaranasi
Official language-Hindi, English
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Indian Rupee (INR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCM230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+5:30
Emergency number911108 or 112
Elevation25 m76 m
Main airportJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre189 non-stop destinationsLal Bahadur Shastri International Airport (VNS)21 km from centre16 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days-

By the numbers

MeasureNew YorkVaranasi
City population8,804,1901,198,491
People per km²7,25614,598
Museums within 10 km1572
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months-

Where else could you go?

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

Browse every destination

Sources

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. Temperature and rainfall for destinations with no weather station are from the NASA POWER 2001-2020 climatology, derived from MERRA-2. 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.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate and flight figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-10-27. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.