VacationSelector

Sydney or Varanasi?

Two destinations compared in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

The Opera House from the water, Sydney
Sydney

Photo: Bernard Spragg, CC0

Rowing boats below the ghats in the morning light, Varanasi
Varanasi

Photo: Dennis G. Jarvis, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped

Your match

Sydney
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on beaches and families with your weighting.

Varanasi
40
match

Wins on prices and culture and sights with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Our verdict on each category, scored 0 to 100 against fixed benchmark cities.

SydneyVaranasi
Beaches & swimming. Sydney leads by 91 points.91
Food & drink. Sydney leads by 22 points.22
Culture & sights. Varanasi leads by 20 points.20
Nightlife. Sydney leads by 50 points.50
Nature & outdoors. Sydney leads by 67 points.67
Day trips. Sydney leads by 8 points.8
Good for families. Sydney leads by 70 points.70
Getting around. Sydney leads by 47 points.47
Shopping & style. Sydney leads by 13 points.13
Affordability. Varanasi leads by 70 points.70
Live music & performing arts. Sydney leads by 15 points.15
Wellness & relaxation. Sydney leads by 25 points.25
0255075100

What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Sydney and Varanasi.

When should you go?

Pick the month you can travel and see both cities side by side. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Climate figures for July
JulySydneyVaranasi
Daytime high18 °C35 °C
Night-time low9 °C27 °C
Rainfall in the month70 mm249 mm
Sunshine7 hours a dayNo figure
Sea temperature19 °CNo sea
Daylight10 hours a day14 hours a day

The whole year

Each row is shaded against that destination’s own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that figure 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
Varanasi
24
29
35
41
43
41
35
33
32
32
28
24
Sea temperature, °C
Sydney
23
23
23
22
21
20
19
18
18
19
20
21
Varanasi
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Sydney
80
116
90
95
89
121
70
63
57
55
71
68
Varanasi
12
14
10
11
23
110
249
200
146
34
2
5
Daylight, hours per day
Sydney
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Varanasi
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Sunshine, hours per day
Sydney
8
6
7
7
7
6
7
8
8
8
7
8
Varanasi
No sunshine record

Where the figures come from

Varanasi has no weather station within reach, so its figures come from a gridded climate model rather than a measured record, and read a broad area rather than the city itself.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Sydney: 1991-2020 normals, Sydney Airport (3.7 km from centre). Varanasi: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km.

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSydneyVaranasi
New DelhiDEL
12 h 55 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
1 h 25 m
€121-127
VNS · 21 km
BengaluruBLR
11 h 40 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
VNS · 21 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
9 h 30 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
3 h 20 m
€433-468
1 stop
VNS · 21 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 2026-10 to 2026-12, 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

MeasureSydneyVaranasi
Official languageEnglishHindi, English
CurrencyAustralian Dollar (AUD)Indian Rupee (INR)
SocketsI230 V, 50 HzCM230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC+10, UTC+11 in summerUTC+5:30
Emergency number000108 or 112
Elevation6 m76 m
Main airportSydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (SYD)9 km from centre99 non-stop destinationsLal Bahadur Shastri International Airport (VNS)21 km from centre16 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days-

By the numbers

MeasureSydneyVaranasi
City population5,450,4961,198,491
People per km²44914,598
Museums within 10 km382
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
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 Sydney or Varanasi somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

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. Temperature and rainfall for destinations with no weather station are from the NASA POWER 2001-2020 climatology, derived from MERRA-2. 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.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate and flight figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-10-27. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.