VacationSelector

Cannes 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

Cannes
49
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on nature & day trips and nightlife 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.

CannesSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. Cannes leads by 18 points.18
CannesSan Sebastian
Score7355
Swim season months42
Beaches 10 km6810
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. San Sebastian leads by 5 points.5
CannesSan Sebastian
Score5055
Restaurants within 2 km of centre473472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1926
Museums & heritage. San Sebastian leads by 3 points.3
CannesSan Sebastian
Score3639
Museums within 10 km3117
Museums within 2 km of centre57
Share of museums within 2 km %1641
Unesco sites within 50 km23
Nightlife. San Sebastian leads by 12 points.12
CannesSan Sebastian
Score2840
Drinking venues within 4 km188388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre164338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8787
Nightclubs within 4 km1912
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 23 points.23
CannesSan Sebastian
Score3356
Protected land share 50 km %1711
Landscape blanket share 50 km %160
Land share of disc %5352
Park area within 2 km13 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. San Sebastian leads by 5 points.5
CannesSan Sebastian
Score2530
Tourist attractions within 2 km75
Park area within 2 km13 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Cannes leads by 2 points.2
CannesSan Sebastian
Score5654
Notable places within 2 km9589
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 9 points.9
CannesSan Sebastian
Score6271
Price level global73.760.8
Daily budget€160€122
Year-round weather. Cannes leads by 16 points.16
CannesSan Sebastian
Score7458
Monthly daytime high13.3 °C to 27.9 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall13 mm to 138 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months30
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
Cannes
13
14
15
17
21
25
28
28
25
21
17
14
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Cannes
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
23
20
18
16
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Cannes
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Cannes
9
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
Cannes
5
6
7
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
5
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. Cannes: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (18 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCannesSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 20 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 20 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
€170-248
NCE · 20 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
MunichMUC
1 h 25 m
€198-243
1 stop
NCE · 20 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 30 m
€164-246
1 stop
NCE · 20 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 146 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
1 h 50 m
€137-165
NCE · 20 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€83-135
NCE · 20 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 55 m
no fares
NCE · 20 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€666-799
1 stop
NCE · 20 km
7 h 20 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

MeasureCannesSan Sebastian
Official languageFrenchSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m6 m
Main airportNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)20 km from centre129 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCannesSan Sebastian
City population74,350189,866
People per km²3,7933,118
Museums within 10 km1614
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km23
Distinct cuisines in the centre3845
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months2 months

Where else could you go?

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