VacationSelector

Cardiff or San Sebastian?

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 nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

San Sebastian
✓ Best match
51
match

Wins on value for money and beaches & swimming 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 Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 9 points.9
CardiffSan Sebastian
Score4655
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km810
Coast distance2 km0 km
Water distance2 km0 km
Places to eat. Cardiff leads by 5 points.5
CardiffSan Sebastian
Score6055
Restaurants within 2 km of centre541472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3226
Museums & heritage. Cardiff and San Sebastian are level on 39.
CardiffSan Sebastian
Score3939
Museums within 10 km6117
Museums within 2 km of centre67
Share of museums within 2 km %1041
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Cardiff leads by 8 points.8
CardiffSan Sebastian
Score4840
Drinking venues within 4 km536388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre395338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7487
Nightclubs within 4 km3512
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 6 points.6
CardiffSan Sebastian
Score5056
Protected land share 50 km %1811
Landscape blanket share 50 km %150
Land share of disc %6852
Park area within 2 km88 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Cardiff leads by 2 points.2
CardiffSan Sebastian
Score3230
Tourist attractions within 2 km45
Park area within 2 km88 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 9 points.9
CardiffSan Sebastian
Score4554
Notable places within 2 km5189
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 17 points.17
CardiffSan Sebastian
Score5471
Price level global84.960.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. San Sebastian leads by 4 points.4
CardiffSan Sebastian
Score5458
Monthly daytime high7.7 °C to 20.2 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months00
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 Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cardiff
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
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. Cardiff: 1991-2020 normals, Cardiff-Wales Airport (14.9 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCardiffSan Sebastian
PalmaPMI
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 20 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
ArrecifeACE
3 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MunichMUC
1 h 55 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 25 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
1 h 20 m
€81-137
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 35 m
no fares
BHX · 146 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
IbizaIBZ
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 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

MeasureCardiffSan Sebastian
Official languageEnglishSpanish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation41 m6 m
Main airportCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCardiffSan Sebastian
City population383,536189,866
People per km²2,7343,118
Museums within 10 km914
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre5545
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cardiff 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). 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.