VacationSelector

Boston or San Francisco?

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

Your match

Boston
55
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

San Francisco
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on year-round weather and places to eat 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.

BostonSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. Boston and San Francisco are level on 60.
BostonSan Francisco
Score6060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km6844
Coast distance1 km2 km
Water distance1 km2 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 10 points.10
BostonSan Francisco
Score7383
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4522,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3239
Museums & heritage. San Francisco leads by 1 points.1
BostonSan Francisco
Score4344
Museums within 10 km7957
Museums within 2 km of centre2729
Share of museums within 2 km %3451
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 10 points.10
BostonSan Francisco
Score5868
Drinking venues within 4 km8861,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre513928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5865
Nightclubs within 4 km4397
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 7 points.7
BostonSan Francisco
Score5360
Protected land share 50 km %1217
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %7757
Park area within 2 km116 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 4 points.4
BostonSan Francisco
Score5357
Tourist attractions within 2 km2848
Park area within 2 km116 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 5 points.5
BostonSan Francisco
Score5863
Notable places within 2 km111147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Boston and San Francisco are level on 43.
BostonSan Francisco
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 22 points.22
BostonSan Francisco
Score5678
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months07
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
Boston
3
4
8
14
19
25
28
27
23
17
11
6
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
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
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
San Francisco
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Boston: 1991-2020 normals, Boston Logan International (3.5 km from centre). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonSan Francisco
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 20 m
€176-196
BOS · 4 km
4 h 10 m
€196-293
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
5 h 0 m
€364-450
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
TokyoHND, NRT
13 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€211-283
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
1 h 25 m
€175-234
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
5 h 15 m
€252-262
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 35 m
€341-355
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DenverDEN, APA
4 h 0 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
13 h 15 m
no fares
BOS · 4 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

MeasureBostonSan Francisco
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
Elevation43 m16 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonSan Francisco
City population675,647873,965
People per km²2,9101,455
Museums within 10 km5150
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre74108
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Boston 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). 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. 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.