Tokyo or Beijing?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on nature & day trips and beaches & swimming with your weighting.
Wins on value for money and good for families 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 Beijing if you are travelling with children, or want heritage within day-trip range: more park space near the centre, more theme parks, and 6 UNESCO-listed places to reach on a day out, in a drier climate.
Choose Tokyo if you want a walkable centre thick with notable places, a much larger set of museums, and mild winters near 10°C with a beach within reach.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Tokyo leads by 21 points.21
| Tokyo | Beijing | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 21 | 0 |
| Swim season months | 4 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 1 | 0 |
| Coast distance | 5 km | 145 km |
| Water distance | 5 km | — |
Museums & heritage. Tokyo leads by 3 points.3
| Tokyo | Beijing | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 66 | 63 |
| Museums within 10 km | 302 | 95 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 52 | 15 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 17 | 16 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 1 | 6 |
Nature & day trips. Tokyo leads by 23 points.23
| Tokyo | Beijing | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 58 | 35 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | — | 3 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 85 | 100 |
| Park area within 2 km | 85 hectares | 143 hectares |
Good for families. Beijing leads by 6 points.6
| Tokyo | Beijing | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 71 | 77 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 40 | 41 |
| Park area within 2 km | 85 hectares | 143 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 9 | 12 |
Sights concentration. Tokyo leads by 10 points.10
| Tokyo | Beijing | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 60 | 50 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 121 | 69 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Beijing leads by 9 points.9
| Tokyo | Beijing | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 70 | 79 |
| Price level global | 62.4 | 49 |
| Daily budget | — | — |
Year-round weather. Beijing leads by 2 points.2
| Tokyo | Beijing | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 64 | 66 |
| Monthly daytime high | 10 °C to 31.5 °C | 2.2 °C to 31.8 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 57 mm to 237 mm | 3 mm to 163 mm |
| Dry months | 0 | 8 |
Where they differ
Beijing suits families and day trips better: about twice as much park space near the centre as Tokyo, and 12 theme parks within reach against Tokyo's 9. For heritage it has 6 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip range, against 1 for Tokyo.
Tokyo is the denser city on foot, with about twice as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, and three times as many museums. It also has a beach, and a sea warm enough to swim in late summer, which Beijing lacks.
Where they are alike
Both cities top out at the same summer heat, 32°C, and both are at their coldest in January, so the shape of the year is similar, even if Beijing's swings are wider.
Both carry a serious museum and heritage offering, and both work with children: a similar number of tourist attractions near the centre, and theme parks within reach of each, 12 around Beijing and 9 near Tokyo.
Which traveller are you?
Families with young children: Beijing. It has about twice as much park space near the centre as Tokyo, 12 theme parks within reach against Tokyo's 9, and a similar number of attractions close in, though the winters are much colder.
Heritage travellers who like leaving the city: Beijing again, with 6 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Tokyo's 1. Tokyo answers with roughly three times as many museums, which matters more if you stay put.
Short-trip city walkers: Tokyo. About twice as many notable places sit within walking distance of the centre, and if you want sea, it has a beach and swimmable water at the end of summer.
What the numbers don't tell you
No cost comparison is possible here. The dataset carries no daily budget figure for either city, so nothing in it tells you which trip costs less day to day; the value ranking rests on a different measure.
Tokyo's coastal advantage is thinner than it looks: it rests on a single beach, and the sea only reaches 26°C at the end of summer, just as the wettest stretch of the year arrives, close to 237mm in a month. Beijing's drier profile is real, but it comes with a January at 2°C, and its hottest months are also its wettest.
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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre). Beijing: 1991-2020 normals, Beijing (11.1 km from centre).
Beijing is at its best in late spring, with May warm at 27°C and only 38mm of rain, and again in September, still warm and much drier than July, which brings 163mm.
Tokyo is the steadier choice outside those windows. Winter highs of 10-12°C against Beijing's 2-6°C make the cold months usable, and May at 24°C is its strongest month, though wetter than Beijing's spring. Autumn is its wettest, peaking near 237mm.
Getting there
| Flying from | Tokyo | Beijing |
|---|---|---|
| SeoulICN, GMP | 2 h 10 m €124-187 NRT · 56 km | 1 h 45 m €180-197 PKX · 45 km |
| ShanghaiPVG, SHA | 2 h 45 m €296-314 HND · 18 km | 1 h 55 m €144-160 PKX · 45 km |
| Hong KongHKG | 4 h 10 m €255-268 NRT · 56 km | 2 h 55 m €151-190 PKX · 45 km |
| BangkokBKK, DMK | 6 h 10 m €318-337 NRT · 56 km | 4 h 30 m €173-234 1 stop PKX · 45 km |
| SingaporeSIN, XSP | 6 h 55 m €353-477 1 stop HND · 18 km | 5 h 50 m no fares PKX · 45 km |
| ChengduTFU, CTU | 4 h 40 m no fares NRT · 56 km | 2 h 25 m €217-253 PKX · 45 km |
| Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY | 11 h 0 m €789-943 HND · 18 km | 12 h 30 m no fares PEK · 25 km |
| DohaDOH | 10 h 25 m €931-1048 1 stop HND · 18 km | 7 h 55 m €595-787 3 stops PKX · 45 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 11 h 40 m €786-939 1 stop HND · 18 km | 9 h 50 m no fares PEK · 25 km |
| Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC | 13 h 55 m no fares NRT · 56 km | 15 h 20 m no fares PEK · 25 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
| Measure | Tokyo | Beijing |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | Japanese | Putonghua |
| Currency | Yen (JPY) | Yuan Renminbi (CNY) |
| Sockets | AB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region | ACI220 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Left | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+9 | UTC+8 |
| Emergency number | Police 110, fire 119 | Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119 |
| Elevation | 6 m | 43 m |
| Main airport | Tokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinations | Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK)25 km from centre88 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 16 days | 6 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Tokyo | Beijing |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 14,264,798 | 21,893,095 |
| People per km² | 6,501 | 1,334 |
| Museums within 10 km | 191 | 83 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 1 | 6 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 125 | 29 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | 4 months | – |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Tokyo or Beijing somewhere new.