VacationSelector

Tokyo or Zurich?

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 nightlife and good for families with your weighting.

Zurich
44
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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.

TokyoZurich
Beaches & swimming. Tokyo leads by 21 points.21
TokyoZurich
Score210
Swim season months40
Beaches 10 km123
Coast distance5 km632 km
Water distance5 km
Places to eat. Tokyo leads by 23 points.23
TokyoZurich
Score9067
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6,936974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2530
Museums & heritage. Tokyo leads by 10 points.10
TokyoZurich
Score6656
Museums within 10 km30276
Museums within 2 km of centre5237
Share of museums within 2 km %1749
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Tokyo leads by 41 points.41
TokyoZurich
Score9554
Drinking venues within 4 km6,895676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre3,033553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4482
Nightclubs within 4 km5874
Nature & day trips. Tokyo leads by 21 points.21
TokyoZurich
Score5837
Protected land share 50 km %16
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %85100
Park area within 2 km85 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Tokyo leads by 35 points.35
TokyoZurich
Score7136
Tourist attractions within 2 km408
Park area within 2 km85 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km92
Sights concentration. Tokyo leads by 1 points.1
TokyoZurich
Score6059
Notable places within 2 km121119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tokyo leads by 35 points.35
TokyoZurich
Score7035
Price level global62.4110.5
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. Tokyo leads by 11 points.11
TokyoZurich
Score6453
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 31.5 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall57 mm to 237 mm60 mm to 128 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
Tokyo
10
11
14
19
24
26
30
32
28
22
17
12
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Tokyo
14
13
13
15
18
21
23
26
25
22
19
16
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Tokyo
60
57
117
134
140
168
157
155
221
237
97
58
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Tokyo
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Tokyo
6
6
6
6
6
4
5
6
4
4
5
6
Zurich
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromTokyoZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 55 m
€820-907
1 stop
HND · 18 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
SeoulICN, GMP
2 h 10 m
€124-187
NRT · 56 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
2 h 45 m
€296-314
HND · 18 km
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
6 h 10 m
€318-337
NRT · 56 km
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
Hong KongHKG
4 h 10 m
€255-268
NRT · 56 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 30 m
€813-1004
HND · 18 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
6 h 55 m
€353-477
1 stop
HND · 18 km
12 h 45 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
11 h 10 m
€572-637
1 stop
HND · 18 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 40 m
€786-939
1 stop
HND · 18 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
10 h 0 m
no fares
HND · 18 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 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

MeasureTokyoZurich
Official languageJapaneseFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyYen (JPY)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the regionCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+9UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, fire 119112
Elevation6 m408 m
Main airportTokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureTokyoZurich
City population14,264,798452,421
People per km²6,5015,147
Museums within 10 km19163
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre12578
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Tokyo or Zurich 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.