VacationSelector

Dresden or San Jose?

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

Your match

Dresden
✓ Best match
48
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

DresdenSan Jose
Beaches & swimming. San Jose leads by 8 points.8
DresdenSan Jose
Score08
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km221
Coast distance267 km14 km
Water distance14 km
Places to eat. Dresden leads by 20 points.20
DresdenSan Jose
Score6141
Restaurants within 2 km of centre422313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4216
Museums & heritage. Dresden leads by 28 points.28
DresdenSan Jose
Score5426
Museums within 10 km6620
Museums within 2 km of centre349
Share of museums within 2 km %5245
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Dresden leads by 11 points.11
DresdenSan Jose
Score4231
Drinking venues within 4 km359231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre26588
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7438
Nightclubs within 4 km4316
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 31 points.31
DresdenSan Jose
Score3970
Protected land share 50 km %1426
Landscape blanket share 50 km %92
Land share of disc %10091
Park area within 2 km80 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. Dresden leads by 26 points.26
DresdenSan Jose
Score5933
Tourist attractions within 2 km322
Park area within 2 km80 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Dresden leads by 39 points.39
DresdenSan Jose
Score5314
Notable places within 2 km829
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dresden leads by 17 points.17
DresdenSan Jose
Score6043
Price level global75.9100
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 23 points.23
DresdenSan Jose
Score6285
Monthly daytime high4 °C to 26.2 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall31 mm to 83 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months48
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 Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Dresden
No coastline within reach
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Dresden
46
31
36
36
64
72
80
83
55
49
40
45
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Dresden
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Dresden
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
7
6
4
2
2
San Jose
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 Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDresdenSan Jose
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€86-113
PRG · 112 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€737
BER · 147 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
€163-247
PRG · 112 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 5 m
no fares
DRS · 10 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 45 m
€62-97
PRG · 112 km
12 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€118-136
PRG · 112 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 15 m
€111-155
PRG · 112 km
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 20 m
no fares
PRG · 112 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 57 km
MadridMAD
2 h 45 m
€146-195
1 stop
PRG · 112 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 55 m
€276-321
1 stop
PRG · 112 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
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 2026-08 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 Jose
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 m25 m
Main airportDresden Airport (DRS)10 km from centre12 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureDresdenSan Jose
City population564,9041,013,240
People per km²1,7202,167
Museums within 10 km7019
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre7730
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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