VacationSelector

Geneva or San Jose?

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

Your match

Geneva
✓ Best match
50
match

Wins on sights concentration and good for families with your weighting.

San Jose
39
match

Wins on year-round weather and nature & day trips 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.

GenevaSan Jose
Beaches & swimming. San Jose leads by 8 points.8
GenevaSan Jose
Score08
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km431
Coast distance279 km14 km
Water distance14 km
Places to eat. Geneva leads by 29 points.29
GenevaSan Jose
Score7041
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,028313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3516
Museums & heritage. Geneva leads by 26 points.26
GenevaSan Jose
Score5226
Museums within 10 km3520
Museums within 2 km of centre209
Share of museums within 2 km %5745
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Geneva leads by 19 points.19
GenevaSan Jose
Score5031
Drinking venues within 4 km549231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre42788
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7838
Nightclubs within 4 km6016
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 11 points.11
GenevaSan Jose
Score5970
Protected land share 50 km %2726
Landscape blanket share 50 km %212
Land share of disc %10091
Park area within 2 km182 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. Geneva leads by 32 points.32
GenevaSan Jose
Score6533
Tourist attractions within 2 km282
Park area within 2 km182 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Geneva leads by 42 points.42
GenevaSan Jose
Score5614
Notable places within 2 km999
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Jose leads by 8 points.8
GenevaSan Jose
Score3543
Price level global110.5100
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 26 points.26
GenevaSan Jose
Score5985
Monthly daytime high5.1 °C to 26.8 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 94 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
Geneva
5
7
12
16
20
24
27
26
21
16
9
6
San Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Geneva
No coastline within reach
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Geneva
71
55
61
66
77
81
77
80
87
94
87
88
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Geneva
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Geneva
2
3
6
6
7
8
9
8
6
4
2
2
San Jose
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Geneva: 1991-2020 normals, Geneve-Cointrin (5.7 km from centre). San Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGenevaSan Jose
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€91-200
GVA · 5 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€104-203
GVA · 5 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 10 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 25 m
€156-181
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
€160-186
GVA · 5 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
MadridMAD
1 h 50 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 25 m
€65-78
GVA · 5 km
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€318-351
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
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

MeasureGenevaSan Jose
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation403 m25 m
Main airportGeneva International Airport (GVA)5 km from centre140 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureGenevaSan Jose
City population209,0611,013,240
People per km²13,1482,167
Museums within 10 km3519
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre8030
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Geneva 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.