VacationSelector

Tokyo or Bangkok?

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

Your match

Tokyo
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.

Bangkok
62
match

Wins on value for money and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

What matters to you?

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

The verdict

Choose Bangkok if you want warmth without a season attached: highs of 32-36°C all year and a sea warm enough to swim in every month, with clubs and eating out that carry the evenings.

Choose Tokyo if museums, day trips and things to do with children matter more, and you can time the trip for late spring, when days are mild rather than hot.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

TokyoBangkok
Beaches & swimming. Bangkok leads by 19 points.19
TokyoBangkok
Score2140
Swim season months412
Beaches 10 km10
Coast distance5 km23 km
Water distance5 km23 km
Places to eat. Tokyo leads by 7 points.7
TokyoBangkok
Score9083
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6,9363,957
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2526
Museums & heritage. Tokyo leads by 20 points.20
TokyoBangkok
Score6646
Museums within 10 km302103
Museums within 2 km of centre5230
Share of museums within 2 km %1729
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Tokyo leads by 12 points.12
TokyoBangkok
Score9583
Drinking venues within 4 km6,8953,383
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre3,0331,396
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4441
Nightclubs within 4 km5872
Nature & day trips. Tokyo leads by 7 points.7
TokyoBangkok
Score5851
Protected land share 50 km %——
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8583
Park area within 2 km85 hectares42 hectares
Good for families. Tokyo leads by 14 points.14
TokyoBangkok
Score7157
Tourist attractions within 2 km4031
Park area within 2 km85 hectares42 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km94
Sights concentration. Tokyo leads by 12 points.12
TokyoBangkok
Score6048
Notable places within 2 km12162
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bangkok leads by 23 points.23
TokyoBangkok
Score7093
Price level global62.429.7
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Tokyo leads by 8 points.8
TokyoBangkok
Score6456
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 31.5 °C32.4 °C to 35.8 °C
Monthly rainfall57 mm to 237 mm7 mm to 331 mm
Dry months03
0255075100

Where they differ

Bangkok's edge is water you can use in any month: the sea holds 21°C or more across all 12 months against 4 in Tokyo, so swimming is never seasonal, though the coast is 23km from the centre. Its nightlife leans towards clubs, which it has more of.

Tokyo answers with depth on land: several times as many museums, and a UNESCO-listed place within day-trip reach where Bangkok has none. Families get more too: 9 theme parks against Bangkok's 4, more park space near the centre and more attractions.

Where they are alike

Eating out is the main event in both, and the two carry a similar breadth of kitchens. Tokyo has more restaurants near its centre, but neither city leaves you choosing from a short list.

They are close on green space and days out, each with parks near the centre and trips within reach. Neither offers a clean run of dry months either, with 331mm in Bangkok's September and 237mm in Tokyo's October.

Which traveller are you?

If eating and late nights set the trip, both work. Tokyo has more restaurants and more places to drink near its centre; Bangkok has fewer of each but more nightclubs, so the difference is breadth against a club-led night.

Travelling with children, Tokyo is the stronger pick: 9 theme parks against Bangkok's 4, more park space near the centre, and more attractions within walking distance of where you are staying.

For swimming and dependable heat, Bangkok: the sea holds 21°C or more in every month against 4 in Tokyo, and highs stay in the 32-36°C band, though the coast is 23km from the centre.

What the numbers don't tell you

One thing the figures cannot settle is cost. The dataset carries no daily budget figure for either city, so nothing here tells you which is the more expensive trip, or by how much. Treat any impression of relative price as unsupported.

A warm sea is also not the same as a beach. Bangkok's water stays above 21°C all year, but the coast is 23km from the centre and there is no beach close by, so a swim is a day out. Tokyo's beach is 5km away and its sea is warm enough for only part of the year.

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
Tokyo
10
11
14
19
24
26
30
32
28
22
17
12
Bangkok
33
34
35
36
35
34
34
33
33
33
33
32
Sea temperature, °C
Tokyo
14
13
13
15
18
21
23
26
25
22
19
16
Bangkok
27
28
29
30
31
30
30
30
29
29
29
28
Rainfall, mm
Tokyo
60
57
117
134
140
168
157
155
221
237
97
58
Bangkok
18
22
43
92
221
187
184
227
331
276
42
7
Daylight, hours per day
Tokyo
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Bangkok
11
12
12
12
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
Sunshine, hours per day
Tokyo
6
6
6
6
6
4
5
6
4
4
5
6
Bangkok
8
8
8
8
7
5
5
4
4
5
7
8

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre). Bangkok: 1991-2020 normals, Bangkok (5.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bangkok is at its best from November to February, when daytime highs settle at 32-34°C and monthly rain falls to 7-42mm, so days are mostly dry. September and October are the months to avoid, at 276-331mm.

Tokyo is better in late spring: May reaches 24°C with 140mm, comfortable for walking and for the parks. Early autumn is warm but among the wettest stretches of its year, and January sits at 10°C, cold enough to push plans indoors.

Getting there

Flying fromTokyoBangkok
SeoulICN, GMP
2 h 10 m
€124-187
NRT · 56 km
5 h 0 m
€175-251
BKK · 26 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
2 h 45 m
€296-314
HND · 18 km
4 h 5 m
€176-184
BKK · 26 km
Hong KongHKG
4 h 10 m
€255-268
NRT · 56 km
2 h 40 m
€175-181
BKK · 26 km
OsakaKIX, ITM, UKB
1 h 10 m
€106-119
HND · 18 km
5 h 35 m
€293-335
1 stop
BKK · 26 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
3 h 10 m
€333-353
HND · 18 km
4 h 35 m
€178-179
BKK · 26 km
Ho Chi Minh CitySGN
5 h 45 m
€418-441
1 stop
HND · 18 km
1 h 30 m
€127-140
BKK · 26 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
6 h 55 m
€353-477
1 stop
HND · 18 km
2 h 20 m
€163-194
BKK · 26 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 0 m
€789-943
HND · 18 km
16 h 20 m
€646-679
1 stop
BKK · 26 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 55 m
€820-907
1 stop
HND · 18 km
11 h 55 m
€438-523
BKK · 26 km
DohaDOH
10 h 25 m
€931-1048
1 stop
HND · 18 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
BKK · 26 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

MeasureTokyoBangkok
Official languageJapaneseThai
CurrencyYen (JPY)Baht (THB)
SocketsAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the regionABCF220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC+9UTC+7
Emergency numberPolice 110, fire 119Police 191, ambulance 1669, fire 199
Elevation6 m2 m
Main airportTokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsSuvarnabhumi Airport (BKK)26 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days–

By the numbers

MeasureTokyoBangkok
City population14,264,7985,676,648
People per km²6,5013,619
Museums within 10 km19159
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre12591
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Tokyo or Bangkok 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.