VacationSelector

Interlaken or San Sebastian?

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

Your match

Interlaken
23
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

San Sebastian
✓ Best match
51
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife 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.

InterlakenSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 55 points.55
InterlakenSan Sebastian
Score055
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km1210
Coast distance713 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. San Sebastian leads by 26 points.26
InterlakenSan Sebastian
Score2955
Restaurants within 2 km of centre118472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1726
Museums & heritage. San Sebastian leads by 16 points.16
InterlakenSan Sebastian
Score2339
Museums within 10 km517
Museums within 2 km of centre27
Share of museums within 2 km %4041
Unesco sites within 50 km23
Nightlife. San Sebastian leads by 36 points.36
InterlakenSan Sebastian
Score440
Drinking venues within 4 km42388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre38338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %9087
Nightclubs within 4 km312
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 29 points.29
InterlakenSan Sebastian
Score2756
Protected land share 50 km %1911
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10052
Park area within 2 km5 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. San Sebastian leads by 16 points.16
InterlakenSan Sebastian
Score1430
Tourist attractions within 2 km115
Park area within 2 km5 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 32 points.32
InterlakenSan Sebastian
Score2254
Notable places within 2 km1489
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 36 points.36
InterlakenSan Sebastian
Score3571
Price level global110.560.8
Daily budget€248€122
Year-round weather. San Sebastian leads by 1 points.1
InterlakenSan Sebastian
Score5758
Monthly daytime high2.8 °C to 23.6 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 68 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months30
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
Interlaken
3
5
9
15
17
22
24
23
18
14
7
4
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Interlaken
No coastline within reach
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Interlaken
53
41
37
34
52
48
62
61
38
43
51
68
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Interlaken
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
9
9
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Interlaken
No sunshine record
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. Interlaken: 2005-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Meiringen / Unterbach (19.3 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromInterlakenSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 100 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 100 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 50 m
€84-103
ZRH · 100 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 100 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 100 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 100 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
MunichMUC
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 100 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 100 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 100 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 15 m
no fares
BSL · 105 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 2026-09, 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

MeasureInterlakenSan Sebastian
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshSpanish
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation571 m6 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)100 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureInterlakenSan Sebastian
City population6,123189,866
People per km²1,4243,118
Museums within 10 km314
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km23
Distinct cuisines in the centre2245
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 Interlaken 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). 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. 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.

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.