VacationSelector

Beijing or San Sebastian?

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, 2 points apart

Beijing
53
match

Wins on good for families and museums & heritage with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

BeijingSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 55 points.55
BeijingSan Sebastian
Score055
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km010
Coast distance145 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Museums & heritage. Beijing leads by 24 points.24
BeijingSan Sebastian
Score6339
Museums within 10 km9517
Museums within 2 km of centre157
Share of museums within 2 km %1641
Unesco sites within 50 km63
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 21 points.21
BeijingSan Sebastian
Score3556
Protected land share 50 km %311
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10052
Park area within 2 km143 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Beijing leads by 47 points.47
BeijingSan Sebastian
Score7730
Tourist attractions within 2 km415
Park area within 2 km143 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km121
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 4 points.4
BeijingSan Sebastian
Score5054
Notable places within 2 km6989
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Beijing leads by 8 points.8
BeijingSan Sebastian
Score7971
Price level global4960.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Beijing leads by 8 points.8
BeijingSan Sebastian
Score6658
Monthly daytime high2.2 °C to 31.8 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 163 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months80
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
Beijing
2
6
13
21
27
31
32
31
27
19
10
4
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Beijing
No coastline within reach
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Beijing
3
6
9
23
38
74
163
112
56
27
14
3
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Beijing
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Beijing
6
6
7
8
9
7
6
7
7
7
6
6
San Sebastian
3
4
5
5
7
6
7
6
6
5
3
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Beijing: 1991-2020 normals, Beijing (11.1 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBeijingSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
10 h 20 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
9 h 55 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
MunichMUC
9 h 45 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
9 h 50 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
11 h 30 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
9 h 0 m
€475-645
PEK · 25 km
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 75 km
BarcelonaBCN
11 h 0 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 15 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
LisbonLIS
12 h 5 m
no fares
PKX · 45 km
1 h 30 m
€129-223
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
10 h 10 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 50 m
€79-101
BIO · 75 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

MeasureBeijingSan Sebastian
Official languagePutonghuaSpanish
CurrencyYuan Renminbi (CNY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsACI220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, ambulance 120, fire 119112
Elevation43 m6 m
Main airportBeijing Capital International Airport (PEK)25 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year6 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBeijingSan Sebastian
City population21,893,095189,866
People per km²1,3343,118
Museums within 10 km8314
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km63
Distinct cuisines in the centre2945
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Beijing or San Sebastian 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.