VacationSelector

Cologne or San Sebastian?

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

Your match

Cologne
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on good for families and nightlife with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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.

CologneSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 55 points.55
CologneSan Sebastian
Score055
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km4010
Coast distance256 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 17 points.17
CologneSan Sebastian
Score7255
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3526
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 21 points.21
CologneSan Sebastian
Score6039
Museums within 10 km4717
Museums within 2 km of centre277
Share of museums within 2 km %5741
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 24 points.24
CologneSan Sebastian
Score6440
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6687
Nightclubs within 4 km9012
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 15 points.15
CologneSan Sebastian
Score7156
Protected land share 50 km %5311
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10052
Park area within 2 km118 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 42 points.42
CologneSan Sebastian
Score7230
Tourist attractions within 2 km435
Park area within 2 km118 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km61
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 1 points.1
CologneSan Sebastian
Score5354
Notable places within 2 km8189
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 11 points.11
CologneSan Sebastian
Score6071
Price level global75.960.8
Daily budget€163€122
Year-round weather. Cologne leads by 2 points.2
CologneSan Sebastian
Score6058
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 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
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
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. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneSan Sebastian
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 75 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
55 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 30 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 30 m
€112-124
CGN · 15 km
1 h 20 m
€81-137
BIO · 75 km
HurghadaHRG
4 h 45 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
5 h 5 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 2026-09 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

MeasureCologneSan Sebastian
Official languageGermanSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation59 m6 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneSan Sebastian
City population1,024,621189,866
People per km²2,5303,118
Museums within 10 km4014
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre8445
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cologne 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. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.