VacationSelector

Paris or Rio de Janeiro?

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

Paris
67
match

Wins on sights concentration and places to eat with your weighting.

Rio de Janeiro
69
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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.

ParisRio de Janeiro
Beaches & swimming. Rio de Janeiro leads by 100 points.100
ParisRio de Janeiro
Score0100
Swim season months012
Beaches 10 km261
Coast distance149 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Paris leads by 36 points.36
ParisRio de Janeiro
Score9054
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4,732804
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3316
Museums & heritage. Paris leads by 7 points.7
ParisRio de Janeiro
Score7669
Museums within 10 km185110
Museums within 2 km of centre6551
Share of museums within 2 km %3546
Unesco sites within 50 km43
Nightlife. Paris leads by 31 points.31
ParisRio de Janeiro
Score8857
Drinking venues within 4 km3,796818
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,694509
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4562
Nightclubs within 4 km20150
Nature & day trips. Rio de Janeiro leads by 14 points.14
ParisRio de Janeiro
Score4862
Protected land share 50 km %2821
Landscape blanket share 50 km %2617
Land share of disc %10057
Park area within 2 km82 hectares113 hectares
Good for families. Paris leads by 16 points.16
ParisRio de Janeiro
Score7559
Tourist attractions within 2 km8930
Park area within 2 km82 hectares113 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Paris leads by 38 points.38
ParisRio de Janeiro
Score9456
Notable places within 2 km86598
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rio de Janeiro leads by 19 points.19
ParisRio de Janeiro
Score6281
Price level global73.746.1
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Rio de Janeiro leads by 19 points.19
ParisRio de Janeiro
Score6685
Monthly daytime high7.8 °C to 26 °C24 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 75 mm42 mm to 232 mm
Dry months10
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
Paris
8
9
13
17
20
24
26
26
22
17
11
8
Rio de Janeiro
28
28
28
27
25
24
24
25
25
26
26
27
Sea temperature, °C
Paris
No coastline within reach
Rio de Janeiro
25
25
25
25
24
23
22
21
21
22
23
24
Rainfall, mm
Paris
45
38
41
45
75
51
58
54
51
55
54
62
Rio de Janeiro
208
151
173
101
71
49
45
42
69
108
220
232
Daylight, hours per day
Paris
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Rio de Janeiro
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Paris: 1991-2020 normals, Paris-Montsouris (4.6 km from centre). Rio de Janeiro: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km.

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromParisRio de Janeiro
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
11 h 45 m
€806-1124
CDG · 22 km
1 h 5 m
€113-134
GIG · 12 km
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
13 h 45 m
no fares
CDG · 22 km
3 h 0 m
€212-267
GIG · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 30 m
€579-648
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
9 h 45 m
€609-699
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€63-103
CDG · 22 km
11 h 35 m
€996-1109
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
MadridMAD
1 h 55 m
€107-141
ORY · 14 km
10 h 15 m
€910-925
1 stop
GIG · 12 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 20 m
€138-242
ORY · 14 km
9 h 45 m
€821-922
GIG · 12 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 10 m
€444-536
CDG · 22 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
GIG · 12 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 50 m
€292-389
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
14 h 40 m
€1,154-1306
GIG · 12 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€118-132
ORY · 14 km
11 h 25 m
€897-908
GIG · 12 km
PortoOPO
2 h 5 m
€113-136
ORY · 14 km
10 h 0 m
€827-915
1 stop
GIG · 12 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 2026-09 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

MeasureParisRio de Janeiro
Official languageFrenchPortuguese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Brazilian Real (BRL)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCN60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-3
Emergency number112Police 190, ambulance 192, fire 193
Elevation27 m31 m
Main airportCharles de Gaulle International Airport (CDG)22 km from centre277 non-stop destinationsRio de Janeiro Galeão – Tom Jobim International Airport (GIG)12 km from centre59 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureParisRio de Janeiro
City population2,103,7786,211,223
People per km²19,9604,930
Museums within 10 km25170
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km43
Distinct cuisines in the centre16927
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Paris or Rio de Janeiro 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. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.