VacationSelector

Santiago or Sao Paulo?

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

Santiago
55
match

Wins on museums & heritage and year-round weather with your weighting.

Sao Paulo
56
match

Wins on nightlife and good for families 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.

SantiagoSao Paulo
Beaches & swimming. Santiago and Sao Paulo are level on 0.
SantiagoSao Paulo
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km00
Coast distance89 km51 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Sao Paulo leads by 1 points.1
SantiagoSao Paulo
Score7273
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,3171,735
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3227
Museums & heritage. Santiago leads by 2 points.2
SantiagoSao Paulo
Score4543
Museums within 10 km8782
Museums within 2 km of centre3026
Share of museums within 2 km %3432
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Sao Paulo leads by 11 points.11
SantiagoSao Paulo
Score6172
Drinking venues within 4 km9121,747
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre542896
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5951
Nightclubs within 4 km112118
Nature & day trips. Santiago leads by 1 points.1
SantiagoSao Paulo
Score5251
Protected land share 50 km %1726
Landscape blanket share 50 km %015
Land share of disc %10095
Park area within 2 km88 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. Sao Paulo leads by 6 points.6
SantiagoSao Paulo
Score4955
Tourist attractions within 2 km1238
Park area within 2 km88 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Sao Paulo leads by 2 points.2
SantiagoSao Paulo
Score4850
Notable places within 2 km6268
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Santiago and Sao Paulo are level on 81.
SantiagoSao Paulo
Score8181
Price level global46.246.1
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Santiago leads by 2 points.2
SantiagoSao Paulo
Score8583
Monthly daytime high14.3 °C to 27.7 °C22.8 °C to 29.2 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 87 mm26 mm to 297 mm
Dry months81
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
Santiago
28
27
26
21
18
15
14
16
19
22
25
27
Sao Paulo
28
29
28
27
24
23
23
25
25
27
27
28
Rainfall, mm
Santiago
0
2
5
16
46
87
52
44
27
11
6
3
Sao Paulo
297
259
206
89
64
55
53
26
82
128
146
234
Daylight, hours per day
Santiago
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Sao Paulo
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Santiago
11
9
8
6
5
3
4
5
6
8
9
11
Sao Paulo
4
6
6
5
5
5
6
6
5
6
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Santiago: 1991-2020 normals, Santiago Q. Normal (3.1 km from centre). Sao Paulo: 1991-2020 normals, Sao Paulo (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSantiagoSao Paulo
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
2 h 0 m
€140-179
SCL · 14 km
2 h 40 m
€281-355
GRU · 21 km
Rio de JaneiroGIG, SDU, RRJ
4 h 5 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
1 h 5 m
€190-227
GRU · 21 km
LimaLIM
3 h 35 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
BrasiliaBSB
4 h 10 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
1 h 40 m
€232-237
CGH · 9 km
FlorianopolisFLN
3 h 15 m
€255-370
SCL · 14 km
1 h 15 m
€188-232
CGH · 9 km
Belo HorizonteCNF, PLU
4 h 15 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
1 h 15 m
€127-154
GRU · 21 km
RecifeREC
6 h 5 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
3 h 10 m
€233-252
GRU · 21 km
CuritibaCWB
3 h 20 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
1 h 5 m
€137-215
GRU · 21 km
MadridMAD
13 h 15 m
€799-1378
1 stop
SCL · 14 km
10 h 30 m
€739-741
GRU · 21 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 20 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
9 h 40 m
€576-611
GRU · 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 2026-08 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

MeasureSantiagoSao Paulo
Official languageSpanishPortuguese
CurrencyChilean Peso (CLP)Brazilian Real (BRL)
SocketsCL220 V, 50 HzCN60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-4, UTC-3 in summerUTC-3
Emergency numberPolice 133/134, ambulance 131, fire 132Police 190, ambulance 192, fire 193
Elevation575 m760 m
Main airportComodoro Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport (SCL)14 km from centre68 non-stop destinationsSão Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU)21 km from centre102 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureSantiagoSao Paulo
City population6,257,51611,451,999
People per km²7,4687,519
Museums within 10 km5490
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre6459

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Santiago or Sao Paulo 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). 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. 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.