VacationSelector

Bangkok or San Jose?

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

Your match

Bangkok
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on nightlife and value for money with your weighting.

San Jose
39
match

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

BangkokSan Jose
Beaches & swimming. Bangkok leads by 32 points.32
BangkokSan Jose
Score408
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km01
Coast distance23 km14 km
Water distance23 km14 km
Places to eat. Bangkok leads by 42 points.42
BangkokSan Jose
Score8341
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,957313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2616
Museums & heritage. Bangkok leads by 20 points.20
BangkokSan Jose
Score4626
Museums within 10 km10320
Museums within 2 km of centre309
Share of museums within 2 km %2945
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Bangkok leads by 52 points.52
BangkokSan Jose
Score8331
Drinking venues within 4 km3,383231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,39688
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4138
Nightclubs within 4 km7216
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 19 points.19
BangkokSan Jose
Score5170
Protected land share 50 km %26
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %8391
Park area within 2 km42 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. Bangkok leads by 24 points.24
BangkokSan Jose
Score5733
Tourist attractions within 2 km312
Park area within 2 km42 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km42
Sights concentration. Bangkok leads by 34 points.34
BangkokSan Jose
Score4814
Notable places within 2 km629
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bangkok leads by 50 points.50
BangkokSan Jose
Score9343
Price level global29.7100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 29 points.29
BangkokSan Jose
Score5685
Monthly daytime high32.4 °C to 35.8 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall7 mm to 331 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months38
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
Bangkok
33
34
35
36
35
34
34
33
33
33
33
32
San Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Bangkok
27
28
29
30
31
30
30
30
29
29
29
28
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Bangkok
18
22
43
92
221
187
184
227
331
276
42
7
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Bangkok
11
12
12
12
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Bangkok
8
8
8
8
7
5
5
4
4
5
7
8
San Jose
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bangkok: 1991-2020 normals, Bangkok (5.7 km from centre). San Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBangkokSan Jose
TokyoHND, NRT
6 h 5 m
€318-365
BKK · 26 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
SeoulICN, GMP
5 h 0 m
€175-251
BKK · 26 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 57 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 55 m
€438-523
BKK · 26 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
14 h 35 m
no fares
BKK · 26 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
Hong KongHKG
2 h 40 m
€175-181
BKK · 26 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
4 h 5 m
€176-184
BKK · 26 km
12 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 15 m
no fares
BKK · 26 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 45 m
no fares
BKK · 26 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
GuangzhouCAN
2 h 40 m
€144-163
BKK · 26 km
13 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€409-425
DMK · 21 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
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 2026-08 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

MeasureBangkokSan Jose
Official languageThai
CurrencyBaht (THB)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsABCF220 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+7UTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 191, ambulance 1669, fire 199911
Elevation2 m25 m
Main airportSuvarnabhumi Airport (BKK)26 km from centre142 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBangkokSan Jose
City population5,676,6481,013,240
People per km²3,6192,167
Museums within 10 km5919
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre9130
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

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

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.