VacationSelector

Dresden or San Diego?

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

Your match

Dresden
48
match

Wins on value for money and sights concentration with your weighting.

San Diego
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

DresdenSan Diego
Beaches & swimming. San Diego leads by 63 points.63
DresdenSan Diego
Score063
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km2242
Coast distance267 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. San Diego leads by 2 points.2
DresdenSan Diego
Score6163
Restaurants within 2 km of centre422823
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4227
Museums & heritage. Dresden leads by 10 points.10
DresdenSan Diego
Score5444
Museums within 10 km6659
Museums within 2 km of centre3430
Share of museums within 2 km %5251
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. San Diego leads by 8 points.8
DresdenSan Diego
Score4250
Drinking venues within 4 km359615
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre265408
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7466
Nightclubs within 4 km4331
Nature & day trips. San Diego leads by 16 points.16
DresdenSan Diego
Score3955
Protected land share 50 km %146
Landscape blanket share 50 km %90
Land share of disc %10052
Park area within 2 km80 hectares308 hectares
Good for families. San Diego leads by 16 points.16
DresdenSan Diego
Score5975
Tourist attractions within 2 km3240
Park area within 2 km80 hectares308 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km23
Sights concentration. Dresden leads by 13 points.13
DresdenSan Diego
Score5340
Notable places within 2 km8240
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dresden leads by 17 points.17
DresdenSan Diego
Score6043
Price level global75.9100
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 26 points.26
DresdenSan Diego
Score6288
Monthly daytime high4 °C to 26.2 °C18.6 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall31 mm to 83 mm0 mm to 56 mm
Dry months49
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
Dresden
4
6
10
17
21
24
26
26
21
15
9
6
San Diego
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
23
21
19
Sea temperature, °C
Dresden
No coastline within reach
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Dresden
46
31
36
36
64
72
80
83
55
49
40
45
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Daylight, hours per day
Dresden
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Dresden
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
7
6
4
2
2
San Diego
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Dresden: 1991-2020 normals, Dresden-Strehlen (3.8 km from centre). San Diego: 1991-2020 normals, San Diego International Airport (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDresdenSan Diego
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
€163-247
PRG · 112 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€737
BER · 147 km
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
MunichMUC
1 h 5 m
no fares
DRS · 10 km
12 h 5 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
Puerto VallartaPVR
12 h 40 m
no fares
PRG · 112 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 40 m
no fares
LEJ · 113 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SAN · 3 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

MeasureDresdenSan Diego
Official languageGerman
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation126 m129 m
Main airportDresden Airport (DRS)10 km from centre12 non-stop destinationsSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureDresdenSan Diego
City population564,9041,386,932
People per km²1,7201,438
Museums within 10 km7026
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre7744
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month

Where else could you go?

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