VacationSelector

Athens or San Francisco?

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

Your match

Athens
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage with your weighting.

San Francisco
62
match

Wins on nature & day trips and places to eat with your weighting.

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.

AthensSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 12 points.12
AthensSan Francisco
Score4860
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km1444
Coast distance6 km2 km
Water distance6 km2 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 14 points.14
AthensSan Francisco
Score6983
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4312,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2539
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 29 points.29
AthensSan Francisco
Score7344
Museums within 10 km12257
Museums within 2 km of centre7829
Share of museums within 2 km %6451
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Athens leads by 13 points.13
AthensSan Francisco
Score8168
Drinking venues within 4 km2,7181,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5065
Nightclubs within 4 km13697
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 15 points.15
AthensSan Francisco
Score4560
Protected land share 50 km %517
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %5057
Park area within 2 km128 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 14 points.14
AthensSan Francisco
Score7157
Tourist attractions within 2 km6848
Park area within 2 km128 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 12 points.12
AthensSan Francisco
Score7563
Notable places within 2 km291147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 31 points.31
AthensSan Francisco
Score7443
Price level global55.8100
Daily budget€125
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 4 points.4
AthensSan Francisco
Score7478
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months77
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
Athens
13
14
17
21
27
32
34
35
30
24
19
15
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
San Francisco
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Athens: 1991-2020 normals, Athens / Athenai / Pláka (2.2 km from centre). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensSan Francisco
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€174-212
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
MunichMUC
2 h 25 m
€214-254
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 40 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
12 h 30 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
10 h 15 m
€634
ATH · 20 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 30 m
€286-308
ATH · 20 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 18 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

MeasureAthensSan Francisco
Official languageGreek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation74 m16 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensSan Francisco
City population643,452873,965
People per km²16,4991,455
Museums within 10 km8850
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre82108
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Athens or San Francisco 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.