VacationSelector

Sao Paulo or Tokyo?

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

Tokyo
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nightlife 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 PauloTokyo
Beaches & swimming. Tokyo leads by 21 points.21
Sao PauloTokyo
Score021
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km01
Coast distance51 km5 km
Water distance5 km
Places to eat. Tokyo leads by 17 points.17
Sao PauloTokyo
Score7390
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,7356,936
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2725
Museums & heritage. Tokyo leads by 23 points.23
Sao PauloTokyo
Score4366
Museums within 10 km82302
Museums within 2 km of centre2652
Share of museums within 2 km %3217
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Tokyo leads by 23 points.23
Sao PauloTokyo
Score7295
Drinking venues within 4 km1,7476,895
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre8963,033
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5144
Nightclubs within 4 km11858
Nature & day trips. Tokyo leads by 7 points.7
Sao PauloTokyo
Score5158
Protected land share 50 km %26
Landscape blanket share 50 km %150
Land share of disc %9585
Park area within 2 km52 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Tokyo leads by 16 points.16
Sao PauloTokyo
Score5571
Tourist attractions within 2 km3840
Park area within 2 km52 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km19
Sights concentration. Tokyo leads by 10 points.10
Sao PauloTokyo
Score5060
Notable places within 2 km68121
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sao Paulo leads by 11 points.11
Sao PauloTokyo
Score8170
Price level global46.162.4
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Sao Paulo leads by 19 points.19
Sao PauloTokyo
Score8364
Monthly daytime high22.8 °C to 29.2 °C10 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall26 mm to 297 mm57 mm to 237 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
Tokyo
10
11
14
19
24
26
30
32
28
22
17
12
Sea temperature, °C
Sao Paulo
No coastline within reach
Tokyo
14
13
13
15
18
21
23
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Sao Paulo
297
259
206
89
64
55
53
26
82
128
146
234
Tokyo
60
57
117
134
140
168
157
155
221
237
97
58
Daylight, hours per day
Sao Paulo
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Tokyo
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Sao Paulo
4
6
6
5
5
5
6
6
5
6
5
5
Tokyo
6
6
6
6
6
4
5
6
4
4
5
6

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). Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSao PauloTokyo
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
9 h 40 m
€576-611
GRU · 21 km
13 h 30 m
€813-1004
HND · 18 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
21 h 20 m
€1,139-1567
2 stops
GRU · 21 km
3 h 10 m
€333-353
HND · 18 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
12 h 20 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
11 h 0 m
€789-943
HND · 18 km
MadridMAD
10 h 30 m
€739-741
GRU · 21 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
NRT · 56 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
12 h 10 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
11 h 40 m
€786-939
1 stop
HND · 18 km
DohaDOH
14 h 35 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
10 h 25 m
€931-1048
1 stop
HND · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
12 h 5 m
€835-923
HND · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 50 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
11 h 55 m
€820-907
1 stop
HND · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
13 h 5 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
11 h 10 m
€572-637
1 stop
HND · 18 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
9 h 25 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
13 h 55 m
no fares
NRT · 56 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 PauloTokyo
Official languagePortugueseJapanese
CurrencyBrazilian Real (BRL)Yen (JPY)
SocketsCN60 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-3UTC+9
Emergency numberPolice 190, ambulance 192, fire 193Police 110, fire 119
Elevation760 m6 m
Main airportSão Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU)21 km from centre102 non-stop destinationsTokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureSao PauloTokyo
City population11,451,99914,264,798
People per km²7,5196,501
Museums within 10 km90191
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre59125
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months

Where else could you go?

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