VacationSelector

Glasgow or San Jose?

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

Your match

Glasgow
✓ Best match
48
match

Wins on sights concentration and nightlife 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.

GlasgowSan Jose
Beaches & swimming. Glasgow leads by 28 points.28
GlasgowSan Jose
Score368
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km31
Coast distance3 km14 km
Water distance3 km14 km
Places to eat. Glasgow leads by 22 points.22
GlasgowSan Jose
Score6341
Restaurants within 2 km of centre740313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2916
Museums & heritage. Glasgow leads by 19 points.19
GlasgowSan Jose
Score4526
Museums within 10 km3220
Museums within 2 km of centre139
Share of museums within 2 km %4145
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Glasgow leads by 32 points.32
GlasgowSan Jose
Score6331
Drinking venues within 4 km1,078231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre65488
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6138
Nightclubs within 4 km7316
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 32 points.32
GlasgowSan Jose
Score3870
Protected land share 50 km %1626
Landscape blanket share 50 km %122
Land share of disc %9191
Park area within 2 km56 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. Glasgow leads by 8 points.8
GlasgowSan Jose
Score4133
Tourist attractions within 2 km132
Park area within 2 km56 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Glasgow leads by 39 points.39
GlasgowSan Jose
Score5314
Notable places within 2 km809
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Glasgow leads by 11 points.11
GlasgowSan Jose
Score5443
Price level global84.9100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 42 points.42
GlasgowSan Jose
Score4385
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.9 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall102 mm to 207 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
Glasgow
7
7
9
12
15
18
19
19
16
13
9
7
San Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Glasgow
8
7
7
8
10
13
15
15
14
12
11
9
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Glasgow
207
170
147
102
103
111
129
145
132
185
190
205
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Glasgow
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Glasgow
1
2
3
4
5
4
4
4
3
2
2
1
San Jose
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Glasgow: 1991-2020 normals, Glasgow Airport (11.5 km from centre). San Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGlasgowSan Jose
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
€38-45
GLA · 11 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 45 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
6 h 55 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 55 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 45 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
BostonBOS, PSM
6 h 30 m
no fares
EDI · 56 km
5 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
7 h 15 m
no fares
EDI · 56 km
5 h 15 m
€252-262
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 40 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 30 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
CancunCUN
9 h 40 m
no fares
GLA · 11 km
5 h 15 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

MeasureGlasgowSan Jose
Official languageEnglish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999911
Elevation21 m25 m
Main airportGlasgow Airport (GLA)11 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureGlasgowSan Jose
City population626,4101,013,240
People per km²1902,167
Museums within 10 km2919
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre5430
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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