VacationSelector

Sao Paulo or Sydney?

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

Your match

Sao Paulo
56
match

Wins on value for money and year-round weather with your weighting.

Sydney
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration 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.

Sao PauloSydney
Beaches & swimming. Sydney leads by 60 points.60
Sao PauloSydney
Score060
Swim season months06
Beaches 10 km0160
Coast distance51 km7 km
Water distance7 km
Places to eat. Sydney leads by 5 points.5
Sao PauloSydney
Score7378
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,7352,205
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2731
Museums & heritage. Sydney leads by 8 points.8
Sao PauloSydney
Score4351
Museums within 10 km8244
Museums within 2 km of centre2620
Share of museums within 2 km %3245
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. Sydney leads by 3 points.3
Sao PauloSydney
Score7275
Drinking venues within 4 km1,7472,050
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre8961,405
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5169
Nightclubs within 4 km118120
Nature & day trips. Sydney leads by 7 points.7
Sao PauloSydney
Score5158
Protected land share 50 km %2610
Landscape blanket share 50 km %150
Land share of disc %9552
Park area within 2 km52 hectares115 hectares
Good for families. Sydney leads by 9 points.9
Sao PauloSydney
Score5564
Tourist attractions within 2 km3837
Park area within 2 km52 hectares115 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Sydney leads by 10 points.10
Sao PauloSydney
Score5060
Notable places within 2 km68123
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sao Paulo leads by 31 points.31
Sao PauloSydney
Score8150
Price level global46.190.2
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Sao Paulo leads by 2 points.2
Sao PauloSydney
Score8381
Monthly daytime high22.8 °C to 29.2 °C17.7 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall26 mm to 297 mm55 mm to 121 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
Sao Paulo
28
29
28
27
24
23
23
25
25
27
27
28
Sydney
28
27
26
23
21
18
18
19
22
24
25
26
Sea temperature, °C
Sao Paulo
No coastline within reach
Sydney
23
23
23
22
21
20
19
18
18
19
20
21
Rainfall, mm
Sao Paulo
297
259
206
89
64
55
53
26
82
128
146
234
Sydney
80
116
90
95
89
121
70
63
57
55
71
68
Daylight, hours per day
Sao Paulo
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Sydney
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Sao Paulo
4
6
6
5
5
5
6
6
5
6
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. Sao Paulo: 1991-2020 normals, Sao Paulo (5.9 km from centre). Sydney: 1991-2020 normals, Sydney Airport (3.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSao PauloSydney
SantiagoSCL
3 h 45 m
€255-300
GRU · 21 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
12 h 20 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
14 h 50 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
9 h 40 m
€576-611
GRU · 21 km
19 h 30 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 50 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
20 h 40 m
€931-1073
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
DohaDOH
14 h 35 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
15 h 15 m
€997-1100
SYD · 9 km
JohannesburgJNB, HLA
9 h 25 m
€445-559
GRU · 21 km
13 h 40 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
21 h 20 m
€1,139-1567
2 stops
GRU · 21 km
11 h 15 m
€518-556
1 stop
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 2026-09 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

MeasureSao PauloSydney
Official languagePortugueseEnglish
CurrencyBrazilian Real (BRL)Australian Dollar (AUD)
SocketsCN60 HzI230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-3UTC+10, UTC+11 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 190, ambulance 192, fire 193000
Elevation760 m6 m
Main airportSão Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU)21 km from centre102 non-stop destinationsSydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (SYD)9 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureSao PauloSydney
City population11,451,9995,450,496
People per km²7,519449
Museums within 10 km9038
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre5979
Swim season, months above 21 °C6 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Sao Paulo 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. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.