VacationSelector

Catania 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, 1 point apart

Catania
52
match

Wins on museums & heritage and year-round weather with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on nature & day trips and sights concentration 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 Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. Catania leads by 3 points.3
CataniaSan Sebastian
Score5855
Swim season months52
Beaches 10 km510
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. San Sebastian leads by 6 points.6
CataniaSan Sebastian
Score4955
Restaurants within 2 km of centre637472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1426
Museums & heritage. Catania leads by 20 points.20
CataniaSan Sebastian
Score5939
Museums within 10 km3417
Museums within 2 km of centre277
Share of museums within 2 km %7941
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Catania leads by 7 points.7
CataniaSan Sebastian
Score4740
Drinking venues within 4 km537388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre403338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7587
Nightclubs within 4 km1812
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 25 points.25
CataniaSan Sebastian
Score3156
Protected land share 50 km %1011
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6152
Park area within 2 km11 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Catania leads by 6 points.6
CataniaSan Sebastian
Score3630
Tourist attractions within 2 km255
Park area within 2 km11 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 15 points.15
CataniaSan Sebastian
Score3954
Notable places within 2 km3789
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 3 points.3
CataniaSan Sebastian
Score6871
Price level global64.960.8
Daily budget€155€122
Year-round weather. Catania leads by 19 points.19
CataniaSan Sebastian
Score7758
Monthly daytime high15.8 °C to 34.5 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 83 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months50
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 Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Catania
15
15
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Catania
65
45
42
32
18
11
9
9
49
51
71
83
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Catania
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Catania
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
7
6
5
4
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. Catania: 1991-2020 normals, Catania / Sigonella (18.9 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCataniaSan Sebastian
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 55 m
€45-94
CTA · 4 km
1 h 50 m
€79-101
BIO · 75 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 20 m
€38-50
CTA · 4 km
2 h 10 m
€77-99
BIO · 75 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 35 m
€91-153
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
MunichMUC
2 h 5 m
€195-231
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 50 m
€201-205
CTA · 4 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 25 m
€101-146
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 0 m
€106-144
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
MadridMAD
2 h 35 m
€133-162
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
BolognaBLQ
1 h 40 m
€38-100
CTA · 4 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
SDR · 149 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
9 h 15 m
no fares
CTA · 4 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

MeasureCataniaSan Sebastian
Official languageItalianSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation7 m6 m
Main airportCatania-Fontanarossa Airport (CTA)4 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCataniaSan Sebastian
City population311,584189,866
People per km²1,7043,118
Museums within 10 km2514
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre3045
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Catania 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.