  Magnetic activity of the Sun and other stars causes their brightness to vary.
We investigate how typical the Sun's variability is compared to other
solar-like stars, i.e. those with near-solar effective temperatures and
rotation periods. By combining four years of photometric observations from the
Kepler space telescope with astrometric data from the Gaia spacecraft, we
measure photometric variabilities of 369 solar-like stars. Most of the
solar-like stars with well-determined rotation periods show higher variability
than the Sun and are therefore considerably more active. These stars appear
nearly identical to the Sun, except for their higher variability. Their
existence raises the question of whether the Sun can also experience epochs of
such high variability.
