VacationSelector

Las Vegas or San Francisco?

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 nature & day trips with your weighting.

San Francisco
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage 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 dry days and open country: half the land around the city is protected, and rain stays low in every month of the year. Spring and autumn are the windows.

Choose San Francisco if you want the city itself: more restaurants and a wider range of kitchens, a deeper museum offering, beaches nearby, and mild highs of 14-23°C rather than summer heat near 40°C.

Scoreboard

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

Las VegasSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 60 points.60
Las VegasSan Francisco
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km044
Coast distance372 km2 km
Water distance—2 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 21 points.21
Las VegasSan Francisco
Score6283
Restaurants within 2 km of centre9152,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2439
Museums & heritage. San Francisco leads by 25 points.25
Las VegasSan Francisco
Score1944
Museums within 10 km2457
Museums within 2 km of centre429
Share of museums within 2 km %1751
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 10 points.10
Las VegasSan Francisco
Score5868
Drinking venues within 4 km7931,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre485928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6165
Nightclubs within 4 km9097
Nature & day trips. Las Vegas leads by 3 points.3
Las VegasSan Francisco
Score6360
Protected land share 50 km %5017
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %10057
Park area within 2 km7 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 23 points.23
Las VegasSan Francisco
Score3457
Tourist attractions within 2 km1948
Park area within 2 km7 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 12 points.12
Las VegasSan Francisco
Score5163
Notable places within 2 km75147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Las Vegas and San Francisco are level on 43.
Las VegasSan Francisco
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 6 points.6
Las VegasSan Francisco
Score7278
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 40.3 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall1 mm to 21 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months127
0255075100

Where they differ

Las Vegas is the hotter and drier, with daytime highs of 14-40°C across the year and rain at 40mm or less every month, where San Francisco manages seven. Half the land around it is protected, against 17% around San Francisco, and it has 4 theme parks within reach against San Francisco's 1.

San Francisco has more restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens, more museums close in, and more notable places within walking distance. It also has 44 beaches nearby where Las Vegas has none.

Where they are alike

Both give quick access to open space. Half the land around Las Vegas is protected, while San Francisco has far more park space close to the centre. In either case, a day out of town is part of the trip.

Weather and nightlife land close too. Both cool to a 14°C daytime high in their coldest month, and both keep their bars and a similar number of nightclubs near the centre, so evenings are walkable in either.

Which traveller are you?

Eating out and evenings: San Francisco. Many more restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens, plus more places to drink. Las Vegas holds its own on nightclubs, and in both, the nightlife sits near the centre.

Families: mostly San Francisco, with more attractions near the centre, much more park space and 44 beaches within reach. Las Vegas answers with 4 theme parks against one, if that is what your children want.

Walkers and day-trippers: Las Vegas, with half the surrounding land protected and open country beyond the city. San Francisco's nature sits closer in, as park space near the centre rather than protected land further out.

What the numbers don't tell you

No daily budget figure exists here for either city, so the two cannot be compared on cost at all. The value figure they share is a national price level, identical for both by construction, and it carries no information about which trip will cost more, nor any evidence that they cost the same.

No weather station near either city records sunshine hours, so that side of the weather comparison is unmeasured rather than poor. And San Francisco's 44 beaches describe coastline more than swimming: the sea there sits at 12-14°C all year, warmest in September.

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 Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Las Vegas
No coastline within reach
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Las Vegas
14
21
11
5
2
1
9
8
8
8
8
11
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Las Vegas
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
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. Las Vegas: 1991-2020 normals, McCarran International Airport (8.5 km from centre). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Las Vegas is at its best in April and October, when highs sit at 26-27°C and rain is 5-8mm; the open country around it is best walked then. July and August, at 39-40°C, are hard going.

San Francisco is steadier from June to September, with highs of 22-23°C and almost no rain in high summer. Its winters are the trade-off: January brings 105mm against Las Vegas's 14mm, so the drier city in winter is the desert one.

Getting there

Flying fromLas VegasSan Francisco
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
1 h 5 m
€76-164
LAS · 4 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
OAK · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
4 h 55 m
€242-269
LAS · 4 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
1 h 10 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 40 m
€154-209
LAS · 4 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 30 m
€171-225
LAS · 4 km
4 h 10 m
€196-293
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
2 h 35 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
4 h 35 m
€230-263
1 stop
LAS · 4 km
5 h 15 m
€252-262
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
SeoulICN, GMP
12 h 0 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 15 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
3 h 30 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
OAK · 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 2026-08 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 Francisco
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 m16 m
Main airportHarry Reid International Airport (LAS)4 km from centre159 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLas VegasSan Francisco
City population641,903873,965
People per km²1,8431,455
Museums within 10 km2150
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre49108
Swim season, months above 21 °C–None

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Las Vegas 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. 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 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.