VacationSelector

Barcelona or San Francisco?

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

Your match

Barcelona
✓ Best match
71
match

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

San Francisco
62
match

Wins on 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.

BarcelonaSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. Barcelona leads by 5 points.5
BarcelonaSan Francisco
Score6560
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km2044
Coast distance2 km2 km
Water distance2 km2 km
Places to eat. Barcelona leads by 7 points.7
BarcelonaSan Francisco
Score9083
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,7862,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4139
Museums & heritage. Barcelona leads by 24 points.24
BarcelonaSan Francisco
Score6844
Museums within 10 km10557
Museums within 2 km of centre4929
Share of museums within 2 km %4751
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Barcelona leads by 14 points.14
BarcelonaSan Francisco
Score8268
Drinking venues within 4 km2,7111,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,641928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6165
Nightclubs within 4 km24597
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 10 points.10
BarcelonaSan Francisco
Score5060
Protected land share 50 km %1017
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %5157
Park area within 2 km49 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. Barcelona leads by 8 points.8
BarcelonaSan Francisco
Score6557
Tourist attractions within 2 km6048
Park area within 2 km49 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Barcelona leads by 10 points.10
BarcelonaSan Francisco
Score7363
Notable places within 2 km258147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Barcelona leads by 28 points.28
BarcelonaSan Francisco
Score7143
Price level global60.8100
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Barcelona and San Francisco are level on 78.
BarcelonaSan Francisco
Score7878
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 28.9 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 83 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months57
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
Barcelona
14
14
16
19
22
26
28
29
26
22
18
15
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Barcelona
14
13
13
14
17
21
24
25
24
21
17
15
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Barcelona
41
32
40
47
44
27
27
51
83
82
45
36
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Barcelona
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Barcelona
5
5
7
8
8
9
10
9
7
6
4
4
San Francisco
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Barcelona: 1991-2020 normals, Barcelona / Aeropuerto (14.4 km from centre). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBarcelonaSan Francisco
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€37-96
BCN · 13 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€79-101
BCN · 13 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 55 m
€562-701
BCN · 13 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
€114-118
BCN · 13 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 55 m
€62-99
BCN · 13 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 40 m
€54-89
BCN · 13 km
12 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 55 m
€459-799
2 stops
BCN · 13 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 18 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 10 m
€132-158
BCN · 13 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
MunichMUC
1 h 55 m
€121-137
BCN · 13 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€369-388
BCN · 13 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

MeasureBarcelonaSan Francisco
Official languageSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation9 m16 m
Main airportJosep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN)13 km from centre229 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBarcelonaSan Francisco
City population1,731,649873,965
People per km²17,0941,455
Museums within 10 km9550
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre128108
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Barcelona 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.