VacationSelector

Galway or San Francisco?

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

Your match

Galway
39
match

Wins on value for money with your weighting.

San Francisco
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife 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.

GalwaySan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 9 points.9
GalwaySan Francisco
Score5160
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1344
Coast distance1 km2 km
Water distance1 km2 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 46 points.46
GalwaySan Francisco
Score3783
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1732,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2039
Museums & heritage. San Francisco leads by 24 points.24
GalwaySan Francisco
Score2044
Museums within 10 km557
Museums within 2 km of centre529
Share of museums within 2 km %10051
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 42 points.42
GalwaySan Francisco
Score2668
Drinking venues within 4 km1851,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre153928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8365
Nightclubs within 4 km897
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 5 points.5
GalwaySan Francisco
Score5560
Protected land share 50 km %17
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %8557
Park area within 2 km65 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 32 points.32
GalwaySan Francisco
Score2557
Tourist attractions within 2 km548
Park area within 2 km65 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 41 points.41
GalwaySan Francisco
Score2263
Notable places within 2 km14147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Galway leads by 14 points.14
GalwaySan Francisco
Score5743
Price level global80.2100
Daily budget€187
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 24 points.24
GalwaySan Francisco
Score5478
Monthly daytime high8.9 °C to 19.6 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall63 mm to 113 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months07
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
Galway
9
10
11
14
16
19
20
19
18
14
11
9
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Galway
9
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
15
14
12
10
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Galway
100
87
76
63
63
72
76
89
77
101
104
113
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Galway
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Galway
2
2
4
5
6
5
4
5
4
3
2
2
San Francisco
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Galway: 1991-2020 normals, Shannon Airport (64.2 km from centre). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGalwaySan Francisco
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
BostonBOS, PSM
6 h 10 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
5 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
7 h 25 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
4 h 10 m
€196-293
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 10 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
MadridMAD
2 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
3 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
RomeFCO, CIA
3 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
12 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 18 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

MeasureGalwaySan Francisco
Official languageEnglish, Irish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation25 m16 m
Main airportShannon Airport (SNN)64 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureGalwaySan Francisco
City population83,456873,965
People per km²1,5631,455
Museums within 10 km450
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre25108
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Galway or San Francisco 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. 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.