VacationSelector

Sao Paulo or Thessaloniki?

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 places to eat and good for families with your weighting.

Thessaloniki
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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 PauloThessaloniki
Beaches & swimming. Thessaloniki leads by 55 points.55
Sao PauloThessaloniki
Score055
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km04
Coast distance51 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Sao Paulo leads by 23 points.23
Sao PauloThessaloniki
Score7350
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,735640
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2715
Museums & heritage. Thessaloniki leads by 6 points.6
Sao PauloThessaloniki
Score4349
Museums within 10 km8234
Museums within 2 km of centre2622
Share of museums within 2 km %3265
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Sao Paulo leads by 5 points.5
Sao PauloThessaloniki
Score7267
Drinking venues within 4 km1,7471,407
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre896805
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5157
Nightclubs within 4 km11861
Nature & day trips. Thessaloniki leads by 14 points.14
Sao PauloThessaloniki
Score5165
Protected land share 50 km %2625
Landscape blanket share 50 km %150
Land share of disc %9583
Park area within 2 km52 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Sao Paulo leads by 14 points.14
Sao PauloThessaloniki
Score5541
Tourist attractions within 2 km3816
Park area within 2 km52 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Thessaloniki leads by 6 points.6
Sao PauloThessaloniki
Score5056
Notable places within 2 km6898
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sao Paulo leads by 7 points.7
Sao PauloThessaloniki
Score8174
Price level global46.155.8
Daily budget€125
Year-round weather. Sao Paulo leads by 11 points.11
Sao PauloThessaloniki
Score8372
Monthly daytime high22.8 °C to 29.2 °C9.7 °C to 32.1 °C
Monthly rainfall26 mm to 297 mm21 mm to 56 mm
Dry months19
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
Thessaloniki
10
11
15
19
25
30
32
32
27
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Sao Paulo
No coastline within reach
Thessaloniki
14
13
13
15
19
23
26
27
25
21
18
15
Rainfall, mm
Sao Paulo
297
259
206
89
64
55
53
26
82
128
146
234
Thessaloniki
35
32
38
36
44
30
23
21
33
41
38
56
Daylight, hours per day
Sao Paulo
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Thessaloniki
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Sao Paulo
4
6
6
5
5
5
6
6
5
6
5
5
Thessaloniki
4
4
6
6
9
11
11
10
8
6
4
3

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). Thessaloniki: 1991-2020 normals, Thessaloniki Airport (14 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSao PauloThessaloniki
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 50 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
3 h 15 m
€95-156
SKG · 14 km
MunichMUC
12 h 15 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
2 h 10 m
€188-242
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
12 h 10 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
2 h 30 m
€119-127
SKG · 14 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
13 h 5 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
1 h 15 m
€151-156
SKG · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
12 h 10 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
2 h 55 m
€225-285
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
ZurichZRH
12 h 0 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
11 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
1 h 45 m
€117-203
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
12 h 0 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
2 h 50 m
€155-238
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
11 h 50 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
2 h 10 m
€129-217
SKG · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
2 h 50 m
€98-154
1 stop
SKG · 14 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

MeasureSao PauloThessaloniki
Official languagePortugueseGreek
CurrencyBrazilian Real (BRL)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCN60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-3UTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 190, ambulance 192, fire 193112
Elevation760 m6 m
Main airportSão Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU)21 km from centre102 non-stop destinationsThessaloniki Macedonia International Airport (SKG)14 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureSao PauloThessaloniki
City population11,451,999309,617
People per km²7,51916,042
Museums within 10 km9031
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre5945
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Sao Paulo or Thessaloniki 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.