VacationSelector

Kuala Lumpur or San Francisco?

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, level with your weighting

Kuala Lumpur
62
match

Wins on value for money and nature & day trips with your weighting.

San Francisco
62
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.

Kuala LumpurSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 20 points.20
Kuala LumpurSan Francisco
Score4060
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km044
Coast distance38 km2 km
Water distance36 km2 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 5 points.5
Kuala LumpurSan Francisco
Score7883
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,3582,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2839
Museums & heritage. Kuala Lumpur leads by 7 points.7
Kuala LumpurSan Francisco
Score5144
Museums within 10 km4157
Museums within 2 km of centre2629
Share of museums within 2 km %6351
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 1 points.1
Kuala LumpurSan Francisco
Score6768
Drinking venues within 4 km1,3081,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre735928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5665
Nightclubs within 4 km12697
Nature & day trips. Kuala Lumpur leads by 9 points.9
Kuala LumpurSan Francisco
Score6960
Protected land share 50 km %2817
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %9757
Park area within 2 km70 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. Kuala Lumpur leads by 3 points.3
Kuala LumpurSan Francisco
Score6057
Tourist attractions within 2 km2648
Park area within 2 km70 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km51
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 12 points.12
Kuala LumpurSan Francisco
Score5163
Notable places within 2 km75147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Kuala Lumpur leads by 49 points.49
Kuala LumpurSan Francisco
Score9243
Price level global30.6100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 26 points.26
Kuala LumpurSan Francisco
Score5278
Monthly daytime high31.9 °C to 33.7 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall145 mm to 360 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months07
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
Kuala Lumpur
33
33
34
34
34
33
33
33
33
33
32
32
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Kuala Lumpur
29
29
30
30
30
30
30
30
30
30
29
29
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Kuala Lumpur
227
197
270
296
232
145
169
178
215
284
360
281
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Kuala Lumpur
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
12
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Kuala Lumpur: 1991-2020 normals, Sepang/KL International Airport (46.1 km from centre). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromKuala LumpurSan Francisco
TokyoHND, NRT
7 h 0 m
no fares
KUL · 45 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
SeoulICN, GMP
6 h 5 m
€251-273
KUL · 45 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 18 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
1 h 0 m
€89-104
KUL · 45 km
16 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
13 h 10 m
€471-602
KUL · 45 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
5 h 10 m
€203-227
KUL · 45 km
12 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
Hong KongHKG
3 h 40 m
€193-209
KUL · 45 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
GuangzhouCAN
3 h 45 m
€190-211
KUL · 45 km
13 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
12 h 55 m
no fares
KUL · 45 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
5 h 50 m
€215-226
1 stop
KUL · 45 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 10 m
no fares
KUL · 45 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 18 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

MeasureKuala LumpurSan Francisco
Official languageMalay
CurrencyMalaysian Ringgit (MYR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsG240 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number999911
Elevation50 m16 m
Main airportKuala Lumpur International Airport (KUL)45 km from centre136 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days

By the numbers

MeasureKuala LumpurSan Francisco
City population9,000,280873,965
People per km²36,9321,455
Museums within 10 km2550
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre69108
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Kuala Lumpur or San Francisco 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). 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. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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.