VacationSelector

Fort Lauderdale or San Jose?

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

Your match

Fort Lauderdale
✓ Best match
45
match

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

San Jose
39
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 Jose
Beaches & swimming. Fort Lauderdale leads by 76 points.76
Fort LauderdaleSan Jose
Score848
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km71
Coast distance0 km14 km
Water distance0 km14 km
Places to eat. Fort Lauderdale leads by 4 points.4
Fort LauderdaleSan Jose
Score4541
Restaurants within 2 km of centre371313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1816
Museums & heritage. San Jose leads by 6 points.6
Fort LauderdaleSan Jose
Score2026
Museums within 10 km1420
Museums within 2 km of centre69
Share of museums within 2 km %4345
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Fort Lauderdale leads by 3 points.3
Fort LauderdaleSan Jose
Score3431
Drinking venues within 4 km259231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre14488
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5638
Nightclubs within 4 km1816
Nature & day trips. Fort Lauderdale leads by 11 points.11
Fort LauderdaleSan Jose
Score8170
Protected land share 50 km %2026
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %5191
Park area within 2 km45 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. San Jose leads by 14 points.14
Fort LauderdaleSan Jose
Score1933
Tourist attractions within 2 km22
Park area within 2 km45 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. San Jose leads by 14 points.14
Fort LauderdaleSan Jose
Score014
Notable places within 2 km29
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Fort Lauderdale and San Jose are level on 43.
Fort LauderdaleSan Jose
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 9 points.9
Fort LauderdaleSan Jose
Score7685
Monthly daytime high24.2 °C to 32.3 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 219 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months08
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 Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Fort Lauderdale
25
25
25
26
27
28
29
30
29
28
27
26
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Fort Lauderdale
55
59
57
72
159
219
166
198
202
144
91
73
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Fort Lauderdale
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
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 Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromFort LauderdaleSan Jose
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 40 m
€140-271
1 stop
FLL · 7 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 0 m
€167-168
FLL · 7 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 45 m
€133-174
FLL · 7 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
2 h 25 m
€164-177
FLL · 7 km
5 h 15 m
€252-262
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 55 m
€119-159
FLL · 7 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
SJC · 8 km
BostonBOS, PSM
3 h 0 m
€292-332
1 stop
FLL · 7 km
5 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
6 h 0 m
no fares
MIA · 41 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
5 h 5 m
€218-274
1 stop
FLL · 7 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
SJC · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
9 h 50 m
no fares
MIA · 41 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
15 h 30 m
€891-1074
2 stops
MIA · 41 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

MeasureFort LauderdaleSan Jose
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 m25 m
Main airportFort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL)7 km from centre125 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureFort LauderdaleSan Jose
City population182,7601,013,240
People per km²1,8292,167
Museums within 10 km619
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre2530
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

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