VacationSelector

Bucharest or San Jose?

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

Your match

Bucharest
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

BucharestSan Jose
Beaches & swimming. San Jose leads by 8 points.8
BucharestSan Jose
Score08
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km31
Coast distance198 km14 km
Water distance14 km
Places to eat. Bucharest leads by 26 points.26
BucharestSan Jose
Score6741
Restaurants within 2 km of centre667313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4116
Museums & heritage. Bucharest leads by 23 points.23
BucharestSan Jose
Score4926
Museums within 10 km7320
Museums within 2 km of centre409
Share of museums within 2 km %5545
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Bucharest leads by 31 points.31
BucharestSan Jose
Score6231
Drinking venues within 4 km1,017231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre54188
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5338
Nightclubs within 4 km8016
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 34 points.34
BucharestSan Jose
Score3670
Protected land share 50 km %426
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %10091
Park area within 2 km133 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. Bucharest leads by 35 points.35
BucharestSan Jose
Score6833
Tourist attractions within 2 km452
Park area within 2 km133 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Bucharest leads by 47 points.47
BucharestSan Jose
Score6114
Notable places within 2 km1309
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bucharest leads by 42 points.42
BucharestSan Jose
Score8543
Price level global40.9100
Daily budget€99
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 22 points.22
BucharestSan Jose
Score6385
Monthly daytime high2.8 °C to 30.5 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall33 mm to 82 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months18
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
Bucharest
3
6
12
19
24
28
30
31
25
18
11
4
San Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Bucharest
No coastline within reach
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Bucharest
40
33
42
49
71
82
68
48
62
59
44
47
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Bucharest
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Bucharest
2
4
5
6
8
9
10
9
7
5
3
2
San Jose
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bucharest: 1991-2020 normals, Bucuresti / Imh (10 km from centre). San Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBucharestSan Jose
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 10 m
€72-175
OTP · 18 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 50 m
€118-127
OTP · 18 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 20 m
€123-173
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 10 m
€121-131
OTP · 18 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
9 h 40 m
€669-837
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 0 m
€79-110
OTP · 18 km
12 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 45 m
€198-212
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 40 m
no fares
OTP · 18 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
MadridMAD
3 h 35 m
€109-143
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
BarcelonaBCN
3 h 0 m
€92-102
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
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

MeasureBucharestSan Jose
Official languageRomanian
CurrencyRomanian Leu (RON)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation70 m25 m
Main airportBucharest Henri Coandă International Airport (OTP)18 km from centre123 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year17 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBucharestSan Jose
City population1,716,9611,013,240
People per km²7,5972,167
Museums within 10 km4119
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre6830
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bucharest 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. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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. 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.