VacationSelector

Cadiz 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

Cadiz
49
match

Wins on year-round weather and good for families with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on nature & day trips and sights concentration with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Cadiz if you want the beach: 29 beaches, sea at 23°C at the peak and a run of near-dry summer months, plus far more attractions near the centre for children.

Choose San Sebastian if you want a walkable city with more places to eat and drink, more protected countryside within reach and UNESCO-listed sites for day trips, and you can accept cooler, far wetter weather.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

CadizSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. Cadiz leads by 15 points.15
CadizSan Sebastian
Score7055
Swim season months32
Beaches 10 km2910
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. San Sebastian leads by 11 points.11
CadizSan Sebastian
Score4455
Restaurants within 2 km of centre338472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1826
Museums & heritage. San Sebastian leads by 3 points.3
CadizSan Sebastian
Score3639
Museums within 10 km2317
Museums within 2 km of centre167
Share of museums within 2 km %7041
Unesco sites within 50 km03
Nightlife. San Sebastian leads by 10 points.10
CadizSan Sebastian
Score3040
Drinking venues within 4 km241388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre175338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7387
Nightclubs within 4 km612
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 30 points.30
CadizSan Sebastian
Score2656
Protected land share 50 km %411
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4552
Park area within 2 km24 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Cadiz leads by 24 points.24
CadizSan Sebastian
Score5430
Tourist attractions within 2 km805
Park area within 2 km24 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 23 points.23
CadizSan Sebastian
Score3154
Notable places within 2 km2389
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cadiz and San Sebastian are level on 71.
CadizSan Sebastian
Score7171
Price level global60.860.8
Daily budget€122€122
Year-round weather. Cadiz leads by 25 points.25
CadizSan Sebastian
Score8358
Monthly daytime high16.2 °C to 28 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 89 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months50
0255075100

Where they differ

Cadiz runs warmer all year, with daytime highs of 16-28°C against San Sebastian's 11-23°C, and 5 months at 40mm of rain or less where San Sebastian has none. It also has more beaches and many times as many tourist attractions near the centre.

San Sebastian has more countryside: 11% of the land around it is protected against 4% around Cadiz, with about three times as much park space near the centre and a theme park within reach. Its centre holds more notable places within walking distance.

Where they are alike

Neither is a heavy heritage destination. Cadiz has somewhat more museums, tightly grouped around its centre; San Sebastian has 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach. Either way, a couple of afternoons covers it.

Both keep eating and drinking within walking distance of the centre. San Sebastian has about twice as many places to drink and a somewhat wider range of kitchens, but in both cities the bars and clubs cluster centrally rather than spreading out.

Which traveller are you?

Families with children will find more to do in Cadiz, where tourist attractions cluster near the centre. San Sebastian answers with more park space and a theme park within reach, but less else aimed at children.

Anyone travelling to eat and drink should pick San Sebastian: more restaurants near the centre, a wider range of kitchens and about twice as many places to drink, most of them central, alongside more notable places to see on foot.

Swimmers belong in Cadiz, with 29 beaches against San Sebastian's 10 and a longer run of sea at 21°C or more. The sea is 0km from both centres, but Cadiz stays warmer for longer.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figure is a national price level, identical for both by construction, so comparing the two on it tells you nothing; the €122 daily estimate is a national average rather than a measurement of Cadiz or San Sebastian, and neither can be called the cheaper trip.

Cadiz's beach advantage rests on a narrow window. The months when the sea reaches 23°C are also the only near-dry ones, so demand concentrates into July and August. San Sebastian's strengths in walkable sights and nature carry no such penalty, but no month there falls below 92mm, so plan for rain whenever you go.

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
Cadiz
16
17
19
20
23
26
28
28
26
23
20
17
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Cadiz
16
15
16
17
18
21
23
23
22
20
18
17
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Cadiz
62
52
54
43
32
6
0
2
29
76
89
73
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Cadiz
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cadiz
6
7
8
9
11
12
12
11
9
8
6
5
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. Cadiz: 1991-2020 normals, Cadiz Bay / Puntales (5.2 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Cadiz peaks from June to September: highs of 26-28°C, sea at 23°C, and 0-6mm of rain at the height of summer. May is warm enough and still dry. Autumn is the catch, at 76-89mm.

San Sebastian's window is narrower, July and August at 22-23°C with the sea at 21-22°C, and rain persists even then, at about 92-109mm. Late autumn is wetter still, so treat it as a city trip rather than a beach one.

Getting there

Flying fromCadizSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 35 m
€83-157
TNG · 95 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
no fares
XRY · 31 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 40 m
no fares
XRY · 31 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
Santiago De CompostelaSCQ
1 h 25 m
no fares
SVQ · 105 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 5 m
no fares
TNG · 95 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
no fares
XRY · 31 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 55 m
no fares
XRY · 31 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
AlicanteALC
1 h 15 m
€85-133
SVQ · 105 km
1 h 20 m
€81-137
BIO · 75 km
ValenciaVLC
1 h 15 m
€50-96
SVQ · 105 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 30 m
no fares
SVQ · 105 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
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

MeasureCadizSan Sebastian
Official languageSpanishSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation11 m6 m
Main airportJerez Airport (XRY)31 km from centre23 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCadizSan Sebastian
City population109,950189,866
People per km²9,0873,118
Museums within 10 km1114
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km03
Distinct cuisines in the centre2845
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cadiz 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). 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. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.