VacationSelector

Fort Lauderdale or San Diego?

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

Your match

Fort Lauderdale
45
match

Wins on nature & day trips and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

San Diego
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on good for families and sights concentration 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.

Fort LauderdaleSan Diego
Beaches & swimming. Fort Lauderdale leads by 21 points.21
Fort LauderdaleSan Diego
Score8463
Swim season months121
Beaches 10 km742
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. San Diego leads by 18 points.18
Fort LauderdaleSan Diego
Score4563
Restaurants within 2 km of centre371823
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1827
Museums & heritage. San Diego leads by 24 points.24
Fort LauderdaleSan Diego
Score2044
Museums within 10 km1459
Museums within 2 km of centre630
Share of museums within 2 km %4351
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. San Diego leads by 16 points.16
Fort LauderdaleSan Diego
Score3450
Drinking venues within 4 km259615
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre144408
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5666
Nightclubs within 4 km1831
Nature & day trips. Fort Lauderdale leads by 26 points.26
Fort LauderdaleSan Diego
Score8155
Protected land share 50 km %206
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5152
Park area within 2 km45 hectares308 hectares
Good for families. San Diego leads by 56 points.56
Fort LauderdaleSan Diego
Score1975
Tourist attractions within 2 km240
Park area within 2 km45 hectares308 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. San Diego leads by 40 points.40
Fort LauderdaleSan Diego
Score040
Notable places within 2 km240
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Fort Lauderdale and San Diego are level on 43.
Fort LauderdaleSan Diego
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 12 points.12
Fort LauderdaleSan Diego
Score7688
Monthly daytime high24.2 °C to 32.3 °C18.6 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 219 mm0 mm to 56 mm
Dry months09
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
Fort Lauderdale
24
26
27
29
30
31
32
32
31
30
27
26
San Diego
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
23
21
19
Sea temperature, °C
Fort Lauderdale
25
25
25
26
27
28
29
30
29
28
27
26
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Fort Lauderdale
55
59
57
72
159
219
166
198
202
144
91
73
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Daylight, hours per day
Fort Lauderdale
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Fort Lauderdale: 1991-2020 normals, Fort Lauderdale (7.1 km from centre). San Diego: 1991-2020 normals, San Diego International Airport (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromFort LauderdaleSan Diego
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 40 m
€140-271
1 stop
FLL · 7 km
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 55 m
€119-159
FLL · 7 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
San FranciscoSFO
5 h 35 m
€349-373
2 stops
FLL · 7 km
1 h 30 m
€121-158
SAN · 3 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 45 m
€133-174
FLL · 7 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
2 h 25 m
€164-177
FLL · 7 km
4 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
BostonBOS, PSM
3 h 0 m
€292-332
1 stop
FLL · 7 km
5 h 35 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
4 h 25 m
no fares
FLL · 7 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 0 m
€167-168
FLL · 7 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
Las VegasLAS
4 h 45 m
no fares
FLL · 7 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
MunichMUC
10 h 10 m
no fares
MIA · 41 km
12 h 5 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

MeasureFort LauderdaleSan Diego
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation11 m129 m
Main airportFort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL)7 km from centre125 non-stop destinationsSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureFort LauderdaleSan Diego
City population182,7601,386,932
People per km²1,8291,438
Museums within 10 km626
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre2544
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months1 month

Where else could you go?

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