VacationSelector

Dublin or San Sebastian?

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

Your match

Dublin
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on nightlife and good for families with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

DublinSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 6 points.6
DublinSan Sebastian
Score4955
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km1110
Coast distance3 km0 km
Water distance3 km0 km
Places to eat. Dublin leads by 15 points.15
DublinSan Sebastian
Score7055
Restaurants within 2 km of centre920472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3726
Museums & heritage. Dublin leads by 16 points.16
DublinSan Sebastian
Score5539
Museums within 10 km4717
Museums within 2 km of centre377
Share of museums within 2 km %7941
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Dublin leads by 24 points.24
DublinSan Sebastian
Score6440
Drinking venues within 4 km1,239388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre934338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7587
Nightclubs within 4 km4012
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 30 points.30
DublinSan Sebastian
Score2656
Protected land share 50 km %311
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6252
Park area within 2 km43 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Dublin leads by 24 points.24
DublinSan Sebastian
Score5430
Tourist attractions within 2 km415
Park area within 2 km43 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Dublin leads by 8 points.8
DublinSan Sebastian
Score6254
Notable places within 2 km14189
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 14 points.14
DublinSan Sebastian
Score5771
Price level global80.260.8
Daily budget€187€122
Year-round weather. San Sebastian leads by 4 points.4
DublinSan Sebastian
Score5458
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 19.5 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall52 mm to 83 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
Dublin
8
9
10
12
15
18
20
19
17
14
10
8
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Dublin
9
8
8
9
11
13
15
15
15
13
12
11
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Dublin
62
52
52
55
58
65
62
74
61
78
83
72
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Dublin
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Dublin
2
3
4
5
6
6
5
5
4
3
2
2
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. Dublin: 1991-2020 normals, Dublin Airport (9.3 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDublinSan Sebastian
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 10 m
€33-43
DUB · 9 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€43-47
DUB · 9 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 35 m
€80-139
DUB · 9 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 55 m
€113-161
1 stop
DUB · 9 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MunichMUC
2 h 15 m
€200-272
1 stop
DUB · 9 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€66-101
1 stop
DUB · 9 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 10 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 30 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
2 h 15 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

MeasureDublinSan Sebastian
Official languageEnglish, IrishSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation20 m6 m
Main airportDublin Airport (DUB)9 km from centre201 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureDublinSan Sebastian
City population592,713189,866
People per km²5,1543,118
Museums within 10 km4014
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre7445
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone2 months

Where else could you go?

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