VacationSelector

Cardiff or San Francisco?

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

Your match

Cardiff
48
match

Wins on value for money with your weighting.

San Francisco
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on good for families 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.

CardiffSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 14 points.14
CardiffSan Francisco
Score4660
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km844
Coast distance2 km2 km
Water distance2 km2 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 23 points.23
CardiffSan Francisco
Score6083
Restaurants within 2 km of centre5412,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3239
Museums & heritage. San Francisco leads by 5 points.5
CardiffSan Francisco
Score3944
Museums within 10 km6157
Museums within 2 km of centre629
Share of museums within 2 km %1051
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 20 points.20
CardiffSan Francisco
Score4868
Drinking venues within 4 km5361,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre395928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7465
Nightclubs within 4 km3597
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 10 points.10
CardiffSan Francisco
Score5060
Protected land share 50 km %1817
Landscape blanket share 50 km %154
Land share of disc %6857
Park area within 2 km88 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 25 points.25
CardiffSan Francisco
Score3257
Tourist attractions within 2 km448
Park area within 2 km88 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 18 points.18
CardiffSan Francisco
Score4563
Notable places within 2 km51147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cardiff leads by 11 points.11
CardiffSan Francisco
Score5443
Price level global84.9100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 24 points.24
CardiffSan Francisco
Score5478
Monthly daytime high7.7 °C to 20.2 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months07
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
Cardiff
8
8
10
13
16
18
20
20
18
14
11
9
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Cardiff
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
San Francisco
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cardiff: 1991-2020 normals, Cardiff-Wales Airport (14.9 km from centre). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCardiffSan Francisco
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 10 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 35 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
MunichMUC
1 h 55 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
New DelhiDEL
8 h 40 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
15 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 15 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 18 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

MeasureCardiffSan Francisco
Official languageEnglish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999911
Elevation41 m16 m
Main airportCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCardiffSan Francisco
City population383,536873,965
People per km²2,7341,455
Museums within 10 km950
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre55108
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cardiff or San Francisco 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. 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.