VacationSelector

Heidelberg or San Jose?

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

Your match

Heidelberg
✓ Best match
45
match

Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration with your weighting.

San Jose
39
match

Wins on year-round weather and beaches & swimming 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.

HeidelbergSan Jose
Beaches & swimming. San Jose leads by 8 points.8
HeidelbergSan Jose
Score08
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km61
Coast distance406 km14 km
Water distance14 km
Places to eat. Heidelberg leads by 6 points.6
HeidelbergSan Jose
Score4741
Restaurants within 2 km of centre269313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2616
Museums & heritage. Heidelberg leads by 33 points.33
HeidelbergSan Jose
Score5926
Museums within 10 km5420
Museums within 2 km of centre239
Share of museums within 2 km %4345
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. San Jose leads by 4 points.4
HeidelbergSan Jose
Score2731
Drinking venues within 4 km201231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre16988
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8438
Nightclubs within 4 km816
Nature & day trips. Heidelberg leads by 4 points.4
HeidelbergSan Jose
Score7470
Protected land share 50 km %5226
Landscape blanket share 50 km %222
Land share of disc %10091
Park area within 2 km20 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. Heidelberg leads by 10 points.10
HeidelbergSan Jose
Score4333
Tourist attractions within 2 km292
Park area within 2 km20 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Heidelberg leads by 22 points.22
HeidelbergSan Jose
Score3614
Notable places within 2 km319
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Heidelberg leads by 17 points.17
HeidelbergSan Jose
Score6043
Price level global75.9100
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 24 points.24
HeidelbergSan Jose
Score6185
Monthly daytime high5.2 °C to 25.8 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall45 mm to 80 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
Heidelberg
5
7
12
17
21
24
26
26
21
15
9
6
San Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Heidelberg
No coastline within reach
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Heidelberg
46
46
53
45
69
66
80
67
56
61
62
64
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Heidelberg
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Heidelberg
2
3
4
6
7
7
8
7
6
4
2
1
San Jose
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Heidelberg: 1991-2020 normals, Heidelberg (4.5 km from centre). San Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHeidelbergSan Jose
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 40 m
no fares
FRA · 69 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 55 m
€537-713
FRA · 69 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 25 m
€74-124
FRA · 69 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 45 m
€490-632
1 stop
FRA · 69 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 57 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€139-148
FRA · 69 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
8 h 10 m
€628-668
FRA · 69 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
8 h 20 m
€656-803
2 stops
FRA · 69 km
5 h 15 m
€252-262
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
10 h 25 m
no fares
FRA · 69 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
10 h 10 m
no fares
FRA · 69 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 20 m
€296-339
1 stop
FRA · 69 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
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 2026-09 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

MeasureHeidelbergSan Jose
Official languageGerman
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation114 m25 m
Main airportFrankfurt Main Airport (FRA)69 km from centre293 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureHeidelbergSan Jose
City population162,9601,013,240
People per km²1,4962,167
Museums within 10 km1719
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre4530
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Heidelberg 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. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.