VacationSelector

Sydney or Vancouver?

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

Your match

Sydney
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on year-round weather and nightlife with your weighting.

Vancouver
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

SydneyVancouver
Beaches & swimming. Sydney and Vancouver are level on 60.
SydneyVancouver
Score6060
Swim season months60
Beaches 10 km160109
Coast distance7 km1 km
Water distance7 km1 km
Places to eat. Sydney leads by 4 points.4
SydneyVancouver
Score7874
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,2051,330
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3135
Museums & heritage. Sydney leads by 17 points.17
SydneyVancouver
Score5134
Museums within 10 km4427
Museums within 2 km of centre2015
Share of museums within 2 km %4556
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Sydney leads by 18 points.18
SydneyVancouver
Score7557
Drinking venues within 4 km2,050848
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,405602
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6971
Nightclubs within 4 km12044
Nature & day trips. Vancouver leads by 19 points.19
SydneyVancouver
Score5877
Protected land share 50 km %1019
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5260
Park area within 2 km115 hectares103 hectares
Good for families. Sydney leads by 11 points.11
SydneyVancouver
Score6453
Tourist attractions within 2 km3715
Park area within 2 km115 hectares103 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km23
Sights concentration. Sydney leads by 12 points.12
SydneyVancouver
Score6048
Notable places within 2 km12363
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Vancouver leads by 4 points.4
SydneyVancouver
Score5054
Price level global90.284
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Sydney leads by 28 points.28
SydneyVancouver
Score8153
Monthly daytime high17.7 °C to 27.7 °C7.3 °C to 23 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 121 mm42 mm to 245 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
Vancouver
7
8
11
14
18
20
23
23
19
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Sydney
23
23
23
22
21
20
19
18
18
19
20
21
Vancouver
7
7
8
10
12
14
16
16
14
11
9
8
Rainfall, mm
Sydney
80
116
90
95
89
121
70
63
57
55
71
68
Vancouver
237
121
164
114
73
65
42
49
71
155
245
196
Daylight, hours per day
Sydney
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Vancouver
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Sydney
8
6
7
7
7
6
7
8
8
8
7
8
Vancouver
2
3
4
6
8
7
10
9
7
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Sydney: 1991-2020 normals, Sydney Airport (3.7 km from centre). Vancouver: 1991-2020 normals, Vancouver Harbour CS (4.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSydneyVancouver
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
14 h 50 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
2 h 45 m
€147-217
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
TokyoHND, NRT
9 h 50 m
€671
SYD · 9 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 30 m
€548-574
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
10 h 20 m
€629-762
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
San FranciscoSFO
14 h 45 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
Hong KongHKG
9 h 20 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
12 h 45 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
ManilaMNL
8 h 0 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
13 h 5 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
20 h 40 m
€931-1073
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
19 h 0 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
4 h 35 m
€210-223
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
8 h 5 m
€498-549
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
15 h 45 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
NadiNAN
4 h 25 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
YVR · 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

MeasureSydneyVancouver
Official languageEnglishFrench, English
CurrencyAustralian Dollar (AUD)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsI230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+10, UTC+11 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number000911
Elevation6 m2 m
Main airportSydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (SYD)9 km from centre94 non-stop destinationsVancouver International Airport (YVR)9 km from centre99 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureSydneyVancouver
City population5,450,496662,248
People per km²4495,759
Museums within 10 km3826
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre7985
Swim season, months above 21 °C6 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Sydney or Vancouver 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.