VacationSelector

Heidelberg or San Sebastian?

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

Your match

Heidelberg
45
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nature & day trips with your weighting.

San Sebastian
✓ Best match
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.

Scoreboard

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

HeidelbergSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 55 points.55
HeidelbergSan Sebastian
Score055
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km610
Coast distance406 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. San Sebastian leads by 8 points.8
HeidelbergSan Sebastian
Score4755
Restaurants within 2 km of centre269472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2626
Museums & heritage. Heidelberg leads by 20 points.20
HeidelbergSan Sebastian
Score5939
Museums within 10 km5417
Museums within 2 km of centre237
Share of museums within 2 km %4341
Unesco sites within 50 km43
Nightlife. San Sebastian leads by 13 points.13
HeidelbergSan Sebastian
Score2740
Drinking venues within 4 km201388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre169338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8487
Nightclubs within 4 km812
Nature & day trips. Heidelberg leads by 18 points.18
HeidelbergSan Sebastian
Score7456
Protected land share 50 km %5211
Landscape blanket share 50 km %220
Land share of disc %10052
Park area within 2 km20 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Heidelberg leads by 13 points.13
HeidelbergSan Sebastian
Score4330
Tourist attractions within 2 km295
Park area within 2 km20 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 18 points.18
HeidelbergSan Sebastian
Score3654
Notable places within 2 km3189
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 11 points.11
HeidelbergSan Sebastian
Score6071
Price level global75.960.8
Daily budget€163€122
Year-round weather. Heidelberg leads by 3 points.3
HeidelbergSan Sebastian
Score6158
Monthly daytime high5.2 °C to 25.8 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall45 mm to 80 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months00
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 Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Heidelberg
No coastline within reach
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Heidelberg
46
46
53
45
69
66
80
67
56
61
62
64
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Heidelberg
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Heidelberg
2
3
4
6
7
7
8
7
6
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. Heidelberg: 1991-2020 normals, Heidelberg (4.5 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHeidelbergSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€139-148
FRA · 69 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
FRA · 69 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MunichMUC
1 h 0 m
no fares
FRA · 69 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 5 m
€221-263
1 stop
FRA · 69 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 25 m
€74-124
FRA · 69 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
MadridMAD
2 h 20 m
€145-238
1 stop
FRA · 69 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 50 m
€135-301
FRA · 69 km
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 75 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€102-123
FRA · 69 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 55 m
€537-713
FRA · 69 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 30 m
no fares
HHN · 120 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 2026-09 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 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
Elevation114 m6 m
Main airportFrankfurt Main Airport (FRA)69 km from centre293 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureHeidelbergSan Sebastian
City population162,960189,866
People per km²1,4963,118
Museums within 10 km1714
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km43
Distinct cuisines in the centre4545
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 Heidelberg 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.