VacationSelector

Biarritz 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

Biarritz
38
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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.

BiarritzSan Jose
Beaches & swimming. Biarritz leads by 59 points.59
BiarritzSan Jose
Score678
Swim season months20
Beaches 10 km431
Coast distance1 km14 km
Water distance1 km14 km
Places to eat. San Jose leads by 9 points.9
BiarritzSan Jose
Score3241
Restaurants within 2 km of centre207313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1316
Museums & heritage. Biarritz leads by 5 points.5
BiarritzSan Jose
Score3126
Museums within 10 km1620
Museums within 2 km of centre59
Share of museums within 2 km %3145
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. San Jose leads by 16 points.16
BiarritzSan Jose
Score1531
Drinking venues within 4 km105231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre8288
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7838
Nightclubs within 4 km616
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 40 points.40
BiarritzSan Jose
Score3070
Protected land share 50 km %626
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %6491
Park area within 2 km32 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. San Jose leads by 12 points.12
BiarritzSan Jose
Score2133
Tourist attractions within 2 km22
Park area within 2 km32 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Biarritz leads by 9 points.9
BiarritzSan Jose
Score2314
Notable places within 2 km159
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Biarritz leads by 19 points.19
BiarritzSan Jose
Score6243
Price level global73.7100
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 20 points.20
BiarritzSan Jose
Score6585
Monthly daytime high13.1 °C to 25.8 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall97 mm to 224 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
Biarritz
13
14
16
18
21
23
25
26
24
21
16
14
San Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Biarritz
13
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Biarritz
166
143
127
147
133
106
97
110
146
166
224
179
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Biarritz
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Biarritz
3
3
5
5
6
6
7
7
6
4
3
2
San Jose
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Biarritz: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Fuenterrabia (24.4 km from centre). San Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBiarritzSan Jose
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 3 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 111 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 111 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 3 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 23 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 23 km
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 30 m
€129-223
1 stop
BIO · 111 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 111 km
13 h 20 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 2026-08 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

MeasureBiarritzSan Jose
Official languageFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation0 m25 m
Main airportBiarritz Pays Basque airport (BIQ)3 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBiarritzSan Jose
City population26,2061,013,240
People per km²2,2402,167
Museums within 10 km819
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre2430
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

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