VacationSelector

Osaka 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, 1 point apart

Osaka
65
match

Wins on nightlife and value for money with your weighting.

Sydney
64
match

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

OsakaSydney
Beaches & swimming. Sydney leads by 5 points.5
OsakaSydney
Score5560
Swim season months56
Beaches 10 km25160
Coast distance7 km7 km
Water distance7 km7 km
Places to eat. Osaka leads by 12 points.12
OsakaSydney
Score9078
Restaurants within 2 km of centre9,1342,205
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2531
Museums & heritage. Osaka leads by 13 points.13
OsakaSydney
Score6451
Museums within 10 km7844
Museums within 2 km of centre2220
Share of museums within 2 km %2845
Unesco sites within 50 km62
Nightlife. Osaka leads by 22 points.22
OsakaSydney
Score9775
Drinking venues within 4 km8,4732,050
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre4,4921,405
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5369
Nightclubs within 4 km97120
Nature & day trips. Sydney leads by 30 points.30
OsakaSydney
Score2858
Protected land share 50 km %110
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %8452
Park area within 2 km88 hectares115 hectares
Good for families. Osaka leads by 8 points.8
OsakaSydney
Score7264
Tourist attractions within 2 km4737
Park area within 2 km88 hectares115 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km72
Sights concentration. Sydney leads by 12 points.12
OsakaSydney
Score4860
Notable places within 2 km63123
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Osaka leads by 20 points.20
OsakaSydney
Score7050
Price level global62.490.2
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Sydney leads by 18 points.18
OsakaSydney
Score6381
Monthly daytime high9.7 °C to 33.6 °C17.7 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 185 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
Osaka
10
11
14
20
25
28
32
34
30
24
18
12
Sydney
28
27
26
23
21
18
18
19
22
24
25
26
Sea temperature, °C
Osaka
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Sydney
23
23
23
22
21
20
19
18
18
19
20
21
Rainfall, mm
Osaka
47
61
103
103
136
185
175
113
146
140
73
56
Sydney
80
116
90
95
89
121
70
63
57
55
71
68
Daylight, hours per day
Osaka
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sydney
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Osaka
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5
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. Osaka: 1991-2020 normals, Osaka (1.8 km from centre). Sydney: 1991-2020 normals, Sydney Airport (3.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromOsakaSydney
SeoulICN, GMP
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 38 km
10 h 30 m
€548-574
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
TokyoHND, NRT
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 11 km
9 h 50 m
€671
SYD · 9 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
2 h 10 m
€237-303
KIX · 38 km
9 h 55 m
€539-575
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
6 h 25 m
no fares
KIX · 38 km
8 h 5 m
€498-549
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
SapporoCTS, OKD
1 h 55 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
10 h 45 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
Hong KongHKG
3 h 35 m
€254-314
KIX · 38 km
9 h 20 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
ManilaMNL
3 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 30 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
14 h 50 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
20 h 40 m
€931-1073
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
DohaDOH
10 h 0 m
no fares
KIX · 38 km
15 h 15 m
€997-1100
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

MeasureOsakaSydney
Official languageJapaneseEnglish
CurrencyYen (JPY)Australian Dollar (AUD)
SocketsAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the regionI230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC+9UTC+10, UTC+11 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, fire 119000
Elevation20 m6 m
Main airportKansai International Airport (KIX)38 km from centre62 non-stop destinationsSydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (SYD)9 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureOsakaSydney
City population2,751,8625,450,496
People per km²12,340449
Museums within 10 km4338
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km62
Distinct cuisines in the centre9779
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months6 months

Where else could you go?

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