VacationSelector

Varanasi or York?

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

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

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

York Minster from the city walls, York
York

Photo: PAUL FARMER, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped

Your match

Varanasi
40
match

Wins on prices and live music and the arts with your weighting.

York
✓ Best match
49
match

Wins on families and nature and the outdoors 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.

VaranasiYork
Beaches & swimming. York leads by 10 points.10
Food & drink. Varanasi leads by 13 points.13
Culture & sights. Varanasi leads by 10 points.10
Nightlife. York leads by 26 points.26
Nature & outdoors. York leads by 44 points.44
Day trips. York leads by 38 points.38
Good for families. York leads by 55 points.55
Getting around. York leads by 44 points.44
Shopping & style. Varanasi leads by 9 points.9
Affordability. Varanasi leads by 54 points.54
Live music & performing arts. Varanasi leads by 20 points.20
Wellness & relaxation. York leads by 4 points.4
0255075100

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

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
JulyVaranasiYork
Daytime high35 °C21 °C
Night-time low27 °C12 °C
Rainfall in the month249 mm56 mm
SunshineNo figure6 hours a day
Daylight14 hours a day17 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
Varanasi
24
29
35
41
43
41
35
33
32
32
28
24
York
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
20
18
14
10
7
Rainfall, mm
Varanasi
12
14
10
11
23
110
249
200
146
34
2
5
York
53
44
39
48
43
61
56
65
58
66
62
60
Daylight, hours per day
Varanasi
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
York
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Varanasi
No sunshine record
York
2
3
4
5
6
5
6
5
4
3
2
2

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.

York's temperatures are measured 48 km from the centre, at Leeming.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Varanasi: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km. York: 1991-2020 normals, Leeming (47.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromVaranasiYork
BangkokBKK, DMK
3 h 20 m
€433-468
1 stop
VNS · 21 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 104 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

MeasureVaranasiYork
Official languageHindi, EnglishEnglish
CurrencyIndian Rupee (INR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCM230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC+5:30UTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number108 or 112112 or 999
Elevation76 m25 m
Main airportLal Bahadur Shastri International Airport (VNS)21 km from centre16 non-stop destinationsLeeds Bradford Airport (LBA)39 km from centre69 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year-8 days

By the numbers

MeasureVaranasiYork
City population1,198,491208,400
People per km²14,598766
Museums within 10 km224
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Varanasi or York somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Temperature and rainfall for destinations with no weather station are from the NASA POWER 2001-2020 climatology, derived from MERRA-2. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). 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. Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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.