VacationSelector

Ghent or San Sebastian?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Ghent
50
match

Wins on good for families and museums & heritage with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

GhentSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 29 points.29
GhentSan Sebastian
Score2655
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km810
Coast distance32 km0 km
Water distance32 km0 km
Places to eat. Ghent leads by 15 points.15
GhentSan Sebastian
Score7055
Restaurants within 2 km of centre764472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4926
Museums & heritage. Ghent leads by 19 points.19
GhentSan Sebastian
Score5839
Museums within 10 km2417
Museums within 2 km of centre207
Share of museums within 2 km %8341
Unesco sites within 50 km53
Nightlife. Ghent leads by 9 points.9
GhentSan Sebastian
Score4940
Drinking venues within 4 km570388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre446338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7887
Nightclubs within 4 km2612
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 22 points.22
GhentSan Sebastian
Score3456
Protected land share 50 km %711
Landscape blanket share 50 km %40
Land share of disc %8752
Park area within 2 km84 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Ghent leads by 20 points.20
GhentSan Sebastian
Score5030
Tourist attractions within 2 km195
Park area within 2 km84 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 8 points.8
GhentSan Sebastian
Score4654
Notable places within 2 km5589
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 11 points.11
GhentSan Sebastian
Score6071
Price level global76.260.8
Daily budget€180€122
Year-round weather. San Sebastian leads by 2 points.2
GhentSan Sebastian
Score5658
Monthly daytime high6.4 °C to 22 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall35 mm to 79 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months10
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
Ghent
6
7
10
13
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Ghent
6
6
6
9
12
16
18
19
18
15
11
8
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Ghent
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Ghent
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Ghent
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
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. Ghent: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (44.9 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGhentSan Sebastian
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 56 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
€138-162
2 stops
BRU · 56 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MunichMUC
1 h 20 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 56 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
50 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 30 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
2 h 15 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 2026-08 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

MeasureGhentSan Sebastian
Official languageFrench, German, DutchSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation12 m6 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)56 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureGhentSan Sebastian
City population272,657189,866
People per km²1,7283,118
Museums within 10 km3014
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km53
Distinct cuisines in the centre8345
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 Ghent 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. 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. 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. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.