VacationSelector

Hamburg 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

Hamburg
53
match

Wins on good for families and nightlife 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.

HamburgSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 55 points.55
HamburgSan Sebastian
Score055
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km1610
Coast distance22 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Hamburg leads by 18 points.18
HamburgSan Sebastian
Score7355
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,150472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3826
Museums & heritage. Hamburg leads by 21 points.21
HamburgSan Sebastian
Score6039
Museums within 10 km9417
Museums within 2 km of centre507
Share of museums within 2 km %5341
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Hamburg leads by 28 points.28
HamburgSan Sebastian
Score6840
Drinking venues within 4 km1,339388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre834338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6287
Nightclubs within 4 km11912
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 16 points.16
HamburgSan Sebastian
Score4056
Protected land share 50 km %1411
Landscape blanket share 50 km %100
Land share of disc %9952
Park area within 2 km89 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Hamburg leads by 30 points.30
HamburgSan Sebastian
Score6030
Tourist attractions within 2 km405
Park area within 2 km89 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Hamburg leads by 5 points.5
HamburgSan Sebastian
Score5954
Notable places within 2 km11889
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 11 points.11
HamburgSan Sebastian
Score6071
Price level global75.960.8
Daily budget€163€122
Year-round weather. San Sebastian leads by 3 points.3
HamburgSan Sebastian
Score5558
Monthly daytime high4.3 °C to 23.2 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall39 mm to 82 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
Hamburg
4
5
9
14
18
21
23
23
19
14
8
5
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Hamburg
No coastline within reach
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Hamburg
67
55
57
39
58
74
82
77
65
63
61
72
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Hamburg
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Hamburg
1
2
4
6
7
7
7
7
5
4
2
1
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. Hamburg: 1991-2020 normals, Hamburg Airport (9.3 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHamburgSan Sebastian
MunichMUC
1 h 20 m
€195-270
HAM · 9 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 35 m
no fares
HAM · 9 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 10 m
no fares
HAM · 9 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€155-168
1 stop
HAM · 9 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€89-225
HAM · 9 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 5 m
€337-378
1 stop
HAM · 9 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€178-237
HAM · 9 km
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
2 h 45 m
€193
HAM · 9 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 50 m
€415-451
2 stops
HAM · 9 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MarrakechRAK
4 h 0 m
no fares
HAM · 9 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

MeasureHamburgSan Sebastian
Official languageGermanSpanish
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
Elevation6 m6 m
Main airportHamburg Helmut Schmidt Airport (HAM)9 km from centre119 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureHamburgSan Sebastian
City population1,910,160189,866
People per km²2,5303,118
Museums within 10 km7714
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre8345
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months

Where else could you go?

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