VacationSelector

Boston or San Sebastian?

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

Your match

Boston
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on good for families and places to eat with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on value for money 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.

BostonSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 5 points.5
BostonSan Sebastian
Score6055
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km6810
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Boston leads by 18 points.18
BostonSan Sebastian
Score7355
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,452472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3226
Museums & heritage. Boston leads by 4 points.4
BostonSan Sebastian
Score4339
Museums within 10 km7917
Museums within 2 km of centre277
Share of museums within 2 km %3441
Unesco sites within 50 km03
Nightlife. Boston leads by 18 points.18
BostonSan Sebastian
Score5840
Drinking venues within 4 km886388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre513338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5887
Nightclubs within 4 km4312
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 3 points.3
BostonSan Sebastian
Score5356
Protected land share 50 km %1211
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7752
Park area within 2 km116 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Boston leads by 23 points.23
BostonSan Sebastian
Score5330
Tourist attractions within 2 km285
Park area within 2 km116 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Boston leads by 4 points.4
BostonSan Sebastian
Score5854
Notable places within 2 km11189
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 28 points.28
BostonSan Sebastian
Score4371
Price level global10060.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. San Sebastian leads by 2 points.2
BostonSan Sebastian
Score5658
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months00
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 Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
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
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
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. Boston: 1991-2020 normals, Boston Logan International (3.5 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
7 h 5 m
€570
BOS · 4 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
MunichMUC
7 h 55 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
7 h 35 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
BarcelonaBCN
7 h 35 m
€481-586
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
DublinDUB
6 h 20 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIQ · 40 km
LisbonLIS
6 h 40 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 30 m
€129-223
1 stop
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 2026-09 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 Sebastian
Official languageSpanish
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation43 m6 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonSan Sebastian
City population675,647189,866
People per km²2,9103,118
Museums within 10 km5114
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km03
Distinct cuisines in the centre7445
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone2 months

Where else could you go?

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