VacationSelector

Sydney or Tokyo?

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

Sydney
64
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Tokyo
66
match

Wins on nightlife 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.

SydneyTokyo
Beaches & swimming. Sydney leads by 39 points.39
SydneyTokyo
Score6021
Swim season months64
Beaches 10 km1601
Coast distance7 km5 km
Water distance7 km5 km
Places to eat. Tokyo leads by 12 points.12
SydneyTokyo
Score7890
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,2056,936
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3125
Museums & heritage. Tokyo leads by 15 points.15
SydneyTokyo
Score5166
Museums within 10 km44302
Museums within 2 km of centre2052
Share of museums within 2 km %4517
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Tokyo leads by 20 points.20
SydneyTokyo
Score7595
Drinking venues within 4 km2,0506,895
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,4053,033
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6944
Nightclubs within 4 km12058
Nature & day trips. Sydney and Tokyo are level on 58.
SydneyTokyo
Score5858
Protected land share 50 km %10
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5285
Park area within 2 km115 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Tokyo leads by 7 points.7
SydneyTokyo
Score6471
Tourist attractions within 2 km3740
Park area within 2 km115 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km29
Sights concentration. Sydney and Tokyo are level on 60.
SydneyTokyo
Score6060
Notable places within 2 km123121
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tokyo leads by 20 points.20
SydneyTokyo
Score5070
Price level global90.262.4
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Sydney leads by 17 points.17
SydneyTokyo
Score8164
Monthly daytime high17.7 °C to 27.7 °C10 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 121 mm57 mm to 237 mm
Dry months00
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
Sydney
28
27
26
23
21
18
18
19
22
24
25
26
Tokyo
10
11
14
19
24
26
30
32
28
22
17
12
Sea temperature, °C
Sydney
23
23
23
22
21
20
19
18
18
19
20
21
Tokyo
14
13
13
15
18
21
23
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Sydney
80
116
90
95
89
121
70
63
57
55
71
68
Tokyo
60
57
117
134
140
168
157
155
221
237
97
58
Daylight, hours per day
Sydney
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Tokyo
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Sydney
8
6
7
7
7
6
7
8
8
8
7
8
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. Sydney: 1991-2020 normals, Sydney Airport (3.7 km from centre). Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSydneyTokyo
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 30 m
€548-574
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
2 h 10 m
€124-187
NRT · 56 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
9 h 55 m
€539-575
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
2 h 45 m
€296-314
HND · 18 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
14 h 50 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
11 h 0 m
€789-943
HND · 18 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
8 h 5 m
€498-549
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
6 h 55 m
€353-477
1 stop
HND · 18 km
Hong KongHKG
9 h 20 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
4 h 10 m
€255-268
NRT · 56 km
ManilaMNL
8 h 0 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
4 h 15 m
€307-323
NRT · 56 km
Ho Chi Minh CitySGN
8 h 45 m
€404-717
SYD · 9 km
5 h 45 m
€418-441
1 stop
HND · 18 km
Denpasar (Bali)DPS
6 h 5 m
€460-617
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
7 h 15 m
no fares
NRT · 56 km
DohaDOH
15 h 15 m
€997-1100
SYD · 9 km
10 h 25 m
€931-1048
1 stop
HND · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
20 h 40 m
€931-1073
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
11 h 55 m
€820-907
1 stop
HND · 18 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

MeasureSydneyTokyo
Official languageEnglishJapanese
CurrencyAustralian Dollar (AUD)Yen (JPY)
SocketsI230 V, 50 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC+10, UTC+11 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number000Police 110, fire 119
Elevation6 m6 m
Main airportSydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (SYD)9 km from centre94 non-stop destinationsTokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureSydneyTokyo
City population5,450,49614,264,798
People per km²4496,501
Museums within 10 km38191
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre79125
Swim season, months above 21 °C6 months4 months

Where else could you go?

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