VacationSelector

Catania or San Jose?

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

Your match

Catania
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

San Jose
39
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

CataniaSan Jose
Beaches & swimming. Catania leads by 50 points.50
CataniaSan Jose
Score588
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km51
Coast distance1 km14 km
Water distance1 km14 km
Places to eat. Catania leads by 8 points.8
CataniaSan Jose
Score4941
Restaurants within 2 km of centre637313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1416
Museums & heritage. Catania leads by 33 points.33
CataniaSan Jose
Score5926
Museums within 10 km3420
Museums within 2 km of centre279
Share of museums within 2 km %7945
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Catania leads by 16 points.16
CataniaSan Jose
Score4731
Drinking venues within 4 km537231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre40388
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7538
Nightclubs within 4 km1816
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 39 points.39
CataniaSan Jose
Score3170
Protected land share 50 km %1026
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %6191
Park area within 2 km11 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. Catania leads by 3 points.3
CataniaSan Jose
Score3633
Tourist attractions within 2 km252
Park area within 2 km11 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Catania leads by 25 points.25
CataniaSan Jose
Score3914
Notable places within 2 km379
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Catania leads by 25 points.25
CataniaSan Jose
Score6843
Price level global64.9100
Daily budget€155
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 8 points.8
CataniaSan Jose
Score7785
Monthly daytime high15.8 °C to 34.5 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 83 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months58
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
Catania
16
16
19
21
26
31
34
35
30
26
21
17
San Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Catania
15
15
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Catania
65
45
42
32
18
11
9
9
49
51
71
83
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Catania
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Catania
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
7
6
5
4
San Jose
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Catania: 1991-2020 normals, Catania / Sigonella (18.9 km from centre). San Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCataniaSan Jose
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 20 m
€38-50
CTA · 4 km
12 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 0 m
€106-144
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 35 m
€91-153
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
9 h 15 m
no fares
CTA · 4 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 25 m
€101-146
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 10 m
€166-455
CTA · 4 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
MunichMUC
2 h 5 m
€195-231
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 25 m
no fares
CTA · 4 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 50 m
€201-205
CTA · 4 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 5 m
€89-123
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 57 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

MeasureCataniaSan Jose
Official languageItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation7 m25 m
Main airportCatania-Fontanarossa Airport (CTA)4 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCataniaSan Jose
City population311,5841,013,240
People per km²1,7042,167
Museums within 10 km2519
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre3030
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

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