VacationSelector

Edinburgh or San Sebastian?

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

Your match

Edinburgh
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on good for families and nightlife 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.

EdinburghSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. Edinburgh and San Sebastian are level on 55.
EdinburghSan Sebastian
Score5555
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km2010
Coast distance3 km0 km
Water distance3 km0 km
Places to eat. Edinburgh leads by 15 points.15
EdinburghSan Sebastian
Score7055
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,023472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3526
Museums & heritage. Edinburgh leads by 18 points.18
EdinburghSan Sebastian
Score5739
Museums within 10 km3017
Museums within 2 km of centre227
Share of museums within 2 km %7341
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Edinburgh leads by 24 points.24
EdinburghSan Sebastian
Score6440
Drinking venues within 4 km1,193388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre884338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7487
Nightclubs within 4 km6512
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 21 points.21
EdinburghSan Sebastian
Score3556
Protected land share 50 km %211
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %8552
Park area within 2 km166 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 42 points.42
EdinburghSan Sebastian
Score7230
Tourist attractions within 2 km875
Park area within 2 km166 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Edinburgh leads by 6 points.6
EdinburghSan Sebastian
Score6054
Notable places within 2 km12689
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 17 points.17
EdinburghSan Sebastian
Score5471
Price level global84.960.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. San Sebastian leads by 7 points.7
EdinburghSan Sebastian
Score5158
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.8 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 80 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
Edinburgh
7
7
9
12
14
17
19
19
17
13
9
7
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Edinburgh
2
3
4
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
3
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. Edinburgh: 1991-2020 normals, Edinburgh Airport (10 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromEdinburghSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€78-108
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€117-158
EDI · 11 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
€41-45
EDI · 11 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
MunichMUC
2 h 15 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
2 h 40 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 30 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
AlicanteALC
3 h 0 m
€106
EDI · 11 km
1 h 20 m
€81-137
BIO · 75 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 50 m
no fares
EDI · 11 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 2026-09 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

MeasureEdinburghSan Sebastian
Official languageEnglishSpanish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation47 m6 m
Main airportEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureEdinburghSan Sebastian
City population488,050189,866
People per km²1,8843,118
Museums within 10 km3214
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre7845
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 Edinburgh 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). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.