VacationSelector

Granada 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, 2 points apart

Granada
53
match

Wins on good for families and year-round weather with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

The verdict

Choose Granada if you want heat, dry days and a dense centre of attractions to walk children between, and if a summer of 35°C sounds like an opportunity rather than a problem.

Choose San Sebastian if the sea is the point: 10 beaches and swimming in August, with milder daytime highs and rain in every month of the year.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

GranadaSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 55 points.55
GranadaSan Sebastian
Score055
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km010
Coast distance48 km0 km
Water distance—0 km
Places to eat. Granada leads by 12 points.12
GranadaSan Sebastian
Score6755
Restaurants within 2 km of centre872472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3426
Museums & heritage. Granada leads by 9 points.9
GranadaSan Sebastian
Score4839
Museums within 10 km2817
Museums within 2 km of centre267
Share of museums within 2 km %9341
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Granada leads by 12 points.12
GranadaSan Sebastian
Score5240
Drinking venues within 4 km637388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre494338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7887
Nightclubs within 4 km4612
Nature & day trips. Granada leads by 7 points.7
GranadaSan Sebastian
Score6356
Protected land share 50 km %2711
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %9652
Park area within 2 km46 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Granada leads by 26 points.26
GranadaSan Sebastian
Score5630
Tourist attractions within 2 km605
Park area within 2 km46 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 10 points.10
GranadaSan Sebastian
Score4454
Notable places within 2 km5089
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Granada and San Sebastian are level on 71.
GranadaSan Sebastian
Score7171
Price level global60.860.8
Daily budget€122€122
Year-round weather. Granada leads by 16 points.16
GranadaSan Sebastian
Score7458
Monthly daytime high13.1 °C to 34.8 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 51 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months70
0255075100

Where they differ

Granada is the stronger city for keeping children occupied on foot, with many times as many attractions near the centre, though no theme park. It is also warmer and drier: daytime highs run 13-35°C across the year against 11-23°C, and seven months stay at 40mm of rain or less, where San Sebastian has none.

San Sebastian has the coast Granada lacks: 10 beaches nearby and two months when the sea reaches 21°C or more. It also has more park space near the centre and a theme park within reach.

Where they are alike

Both sit within reach of open country worth a day out: 27% of the land around Granada is protected and 11% around San Sebastian, and each has green space in town, more of it in San Sebastian.

Neither is a heavyweight for museums, and both keep what they have close to the centre, so a visit works on foot. Each also has UNESCO-listed places within day-trip range, 3 from San Sebastian and 1 from Granada.

Which traveller are you?

Families wanting things to do within walking distance should take Granada, which has many more attractions clustered near the centre. San Sebastian answers with more park space and a theme park, but far less to walk between.

Anyone who wants to swim should go to San Sebastian, which has 10 beaches nearby and sea at 22°C in August. Granada has no coast at all, and no sea season to plan around.

Travellers who plan their days around eating and late nights are better served in Granada, with about twice as many restaurants near the centre, a wider range of kitchens, and several times as many nightclubs.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value comparison between these two carries no information. It is a national price level, identical for both by construction, and the €122 daily budget beside it is one national estimate rather than a measurement of either city. Neither is the cheaper trip on this evidence.

Elsewhere, high figures hide their timing. San Sebastian's beaches are only fully usable in the short window when the sea reaches 21-22°C, and that window is when everyone else goes. Granada's warmth is not evenly spread either: July at 35°C is a different holiday from a spring visit, though both sit under the same weather heading.

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
Granada
13
15
18
20
25
31
35
34
29
24
17
14
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Granada
No coastline within reach
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Granada
39
33
45
44
29
6
0
3
28
45
51
44
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Granada
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Granada
6
6
7
8
10
12
13
11
8
7
5
5
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. Granada: 1991-2020 normals, Granada / Caserío Hospicio (5 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Granada peaks in May, around 25°C with 29mm of rain, and again in September at 29°C. Midsummer is hot and all but rainless, with highs of 34-35°C. Winter stays mild but takes most of the year's rain.

San Sebastian is at its warmest in August, 23°C on land and 22°C in the sea, and July is close behind. Rain never really stops: even the driest summer months bring around 92-109mm, and late autumn is far wetter.

Getting there

Flying fromGranadaSan Sebastian
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 97 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 55 m
€146-177
AGP · 97 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 20 m
no fares
GRX · 16 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
GRX · 16 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€124-199
1 stop
AGP · 97 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
DublinDUB
2 h 50 m
€122-139
1 stop
AGP · 97 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIQ · 40 km
MunichMUC
2 h 50 m
no fares
AGP · 97 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
no fares
GRX · 16 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 25 m
€58-149
AGP · 97 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
AGP · 97 km
7 h 20 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

MeasureGranadaSan Sebastian
Official languageSpanishSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation693 m6 m
Main airportF.G.L. Airport Granada-Jaén Airport (GRX)16 km from centre12 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureGranadaSan Sebastian
City population233,975189,866
People per km²2,6593,118
Museums within 10 km1914
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre6245
Swim season, months above 21 °C–2 months

Where else could you go?

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