VacationSelector

Atlanta or San Jose?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Atlanta
40
match

Wins on sights concentration and places to eat with your weighting.

San Jose
39
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather 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.

AtlantaSan Jose
Beaches & swimming. San Jose leads by 8 points.8
AtlantaSan Jose
Score08
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km01
Coast distance373 km14 km
Water distance14 km
Places to eat. Atlanta leads by 18 points.18
AtlantaSan Jose
Score5941
Restaurants within 2 km of centre739313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2316
Museums & heritage. Atlanta leads by 9 points.9
AtlantaSan Jose
Score3526
Museums within 10 km4120
Museums within 2 km of centre169
Share of museums within 2 km %3945
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Atlanta leads by 18 points.18
AtlantaSan Jose
Score4931
Drinking venues within 4 km531231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre28488
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5338
Nightclubs within 4 km4616
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 39 points.39
AtlantaSan Jose
Score3170
Protected land share 50 km %126
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %10091
Park area within 2 km113 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. San Jose leads by 1 points.1
AtlantaSan Jose
Score3233
Tourist attractions within 2 km22
Park area within 2 km113 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Atlanta leads by 26 points.26
AtlantaSan Jose
Score4014
Notable places within 2 km399
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Atlanta and San Jose are level on 43.
AtlantaSan Jose
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 18 points.18
AtlantaSan Jose
Score6785
Monthly daytime high12 °C to 32 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall80 mm to 121 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months08
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
Atlanta
12
14
19
23
27
30
32
32
29
23
18
13
San Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Atlanta
No coastline within reach
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Atlanta
116
116
119
99
90
117
121
109
97
80
102
116
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Atlanta
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
10
10
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Atlanta: 1991-2020 normals, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta (29.2 km from centre). San Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAtlantaSan Jose
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€152-200
ATL · 14 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
1 h 40 m
€84-125
ATL · 14 km
5 h 15 m
€252-262
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 5 m
€69-120
ATL · 14 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
TokyoHND, NRT
13 h 40 m
no fares
ATL · 14 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
1 h 50 m
€161-221
ATL · 14 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
SJC · 8 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
4 h 20 m
€165-240
1 stop
ATL · 14 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
SJC · 8 km
SeoulICN, GMP
14 h 10 m
no fares
ATL · 14 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 57 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 35 m
no fares
ATL · 14 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
2 h 5 m
no fares
ATL · 14 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
San JoseSJO
3 h 45 m
no fares
ATL · 14 km
6 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 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

MeasureAtlantaSan Jose
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation225 m25 m
Main airportHartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)14 km from centre238 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAtlantaSan Jose
City population498,7151,013,240
People per km²1,4332,167
Museums within 10 km2719
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre5630
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Atlanta or San Jose 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. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.