VacationSelector

Las Vegas or San Diego?

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

Your match

Las Vegas
45
match

Wins on sights concentration and nightlife with your weighting.

San Diego
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Las Vegas if you want a dense centre and late nights: more notable places within walking distance, more nightclubs and bars, and open, largely protected country within reach for day trips.

Choose San Diego if the sea matters, or you are travelling with children: 42 beaches, water reaching 21°C in late summer, twice as many museums and far more park space near the centre.

Scoreboard

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

Las VegasSan Diego
Beaches & swimming. San Diego leads by 63 points.63
Las VegasSan Diego
Score063
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km042
Coast distance372 km1 km
Water distance—1 km
Places to eat. San Diego leads by 1 points.1
Las VegasSan Diego
Score6263
Restaurants within 2 km of centre915823
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2427
Museums & heritage. San Diego leads by 25 points.25
Las VegasSan Diego
Score1944
Museums within 10 km2459
Museums within 2 km of centre430
Share of museums within 2 km %1751
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Las Vegas leads by 8 points.8
Las VegasSan Diego
Score5850
Drinking venues within 4 km793615
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre485408
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6166
Nightclubs within 4 km9031
Nature & day trips. Las Vegas leads by 8 points.8
Las VegasSan Diego
Score6355
Protected land share 50 km %506
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10052
Park area within 2 km7 hectares308 hectares
Good for families. San Diego leads by 41 points.41
Las VegasSan Diego
Score3475
Tourist attractions within 2 km1940
Park area within 2 km7 hectares308 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km43
Sights concentration. Las Vegas leads by 11 points.11
Las VegasSan Diego
Score5140
Notable places within 2 km7540
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Las Vegas and San Diego are level on 43.
Las VegasSan Diego
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 16 points.16
Las VegasSan Diego
Score7288
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 40.3 °C18.6 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall1 mm to 21 mm0 mm to 56 mm
Dry months129
0255075100

Where they differ

Las Vegas packs about twice as many notable places into walking distance of the centre, with more bars and three times as many nightclubs. 50% of the land around it is protected, against 6% around San Diego, so open country starts sooner.

San Diego has 42 beaches where Las Vegas has none, and sea at 21°C in August. It also has about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre, far more park space and twice the museums, though Las Vegas edges it on theme parks, 4 against 3.

Where they are alike

Eating out is the clearest common ground: both have a similar number of restaurants near the centre and a comparable spread of kitchens, so neither city limits what you eat.

Beyond that, both keep drinking and clubbing close to the centre, even if Las Vegas has more of it, and both put walkable sights and open country within reach: Las Vegas concentrates more notable places near the centre, while San Diego's greenery sits closer in.

Which traveller are you?

Travelling with children, San Diego is the straightforward choice: roughly twice as many attractions near the centre, far more park space, 42 beaches and sea at 21°C in late summer.

For a short break built around late nights, Las Vegas has more bars, about three times as many nightclubs and roughly twice as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, so evenings need little planning.

If you want day trips into open landscape, Las Vegas is ringed by protected land, 50% of it, against 6% near San Diego; if you prefer museums grouped close together, San Diego has about twice as many.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figure here is a national price level, identical for both cities by construction, so it says nothing about which is the better buy; this dataset carries no daily budget for either, so no cost comparison is possible at all. Sunshine hours are missing too, unrecorded rather than low, so the monthly picture rests on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone.

San Diego's steady weather looks unbeatable across the year, but the sea only reaches 21°C in August, and the warmest beach months are also the busiest. Las Vegas's wide annual range hides July at 40°C, when much of the day is best spent indoors.

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
Las Vegas
15
17
22
26
32
38
40
39
35
27
20
14
San Diego
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
23
21
19
Sea temperature, °C
Las Vegas
No coastline within reach
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Las Vegas
14
21
11
5
2
1
9
8
8
8
8
11
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Daylight, hours per day
Las Vegas
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Las Vegas: 1991-2020 normals, McCarran International Airport (8.5 km from centre). San Diego: 1991-2020 normals, San Diego International Airport (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Las Vegas is best in April and October, when highs sit at 26-27°C and rain stays under 10mm. July reaches 40°C, which rules out midday walking; winter days are mild and dry.

San Diego holds steady from July to October, highs of 23-25°C with sea at 19-21°C and little rain. Winter is its wet season, up to 56mm a month, where Las Vegas stays much drier, so a winter trip trades warmth for the chance of a wet day.

Getting there

Flying fromLas VegasSan Diego
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
1 h 5 m
€76-164
LAS · 4 km
50 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
4 h 55 m
€242-269
LAS · 4 km
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
San FranciscoSFO
1 h 25 m
€91-219
LAS · 4 km
1 h 30 m
€121-158
SAN · 3 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 30 m
€171-225
LAS · 4 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
DenverDEN, APA
1 h 50 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
2 h 15 m
€64-224
SAN · 3 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 40 m
€154-209
LAS · 4 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
1 h 10 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
4 h 35 m
€230-263
1 stop
LAS · 4 km
4 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
2 h 20 m
€132-243
1 stop
LAS · 4 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
3 h 30 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
TIJ · 26 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

MeasureLas VegasSan Diego
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation610 m129 m
Main airportHarry Reid International Airport (LAS)4 km from centre159 non-stop destinationsSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLas VegasSan Diego
City population641,9031,386,932
People per km²1,8431,438
Museums within 10 km2126
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre4944
Swim season, months above 21 °C–1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Las Vegas or San Diego 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). 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.