VacationSelector

Calgary or San Diego?

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

Your match

Calgary
38
match

Wins on value for money and places to eat with your weighting.

San Diego
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage 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.

CalgarySan Diego
Beaches & swimming. San Diego leads by 63 points.63
CalgarySan Diego
Score063
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km442
Coast distance649 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Calgary leads by 3 points.3
CalgarySan Diego
Score6663
Restaurants within 2 km of centre749823
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3627
Museums & heritage. San Diego leads by 35 points.35
CalgarySan Diego
Score944
Museums within 10 km859
Museums within 2 km of centre330
Share of museums within 2 km %3851
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. San Diego leads by 6 points.6
CalgarySan Diego
Score4450
Drinking venues within 4 km465615
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre343408
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7466
Nightclubs within 4 km1931
Nature & day trips. San Diego leads by 19 points.19
CalgarySan Diego
Score3655
Protected land share 50 km %46
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10052
Park area within 2 km142 hectares308 hectares
Good for families. San Diego leads by 34 points.34
CalgarySan Diego
Score4175
Tourist attractions within 2 km340
Park area within 2 km142 hectares308 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km53
Sights concentration. San Diego leads by 1 points.1
CalgarySan Diego
Score3940
Notable places within 2 km3740
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Calgary leads by 11 points.11
CalgarySan Diego
Score5443
Price level global84100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 31 points.31
CalgarySan Diego
Score5788
Monthly daytime high-0.7 °C to 24.8 °C18.6 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 106 mm0 mm to 56 mm
Dry months89
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
Calgary
0
-1
4
11
16
20
25
23
19
12
4
0
San Diego
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
23
21
19
Sea temperature, °C
Calgary
No coastline within reach
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Calgary
9
13
19
28
58
106
44
47
33
21
17
17
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Daylight, hours per day
Calgary
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Calgary: 1991-2020 normals, Calgary Int'l CS (8.2 km from centre). San Diego: 1991-2020 normals, San Diego International Airport (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCalgarySan Diego
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
4 h 30 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 15 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
San FranciscoSFO
2 h 35 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
1 h 30 m
€121-158
SAN · 3 km
DenverDEN, APA
2 h 20 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
2 h 15 m
€64-224
SAN · 3 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 50 m
€182-359
1 stop
YYC · 9 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
1 h 30 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
1 h 30 m
€77-88
1 stop
YYC · 9 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
Puerto VallartaPVR
4 h 45 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 55 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 5 m
no fares
YYC · 9 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 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

MeasureCalgarySan Diego
Official languageFrench, English
CurrencyCanadian Dollar (CAD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-7, UTC-6 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation1,045 m129 m
Main airportCalgary International Airport (YYC)9 km from centre106 non-stop destinationsSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCalgarySan Diego
City population1,306,7841,386,932
People per km²1,5831,438
Museums within 10 km1326
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre6744
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Calgary or San Diego 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). 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.