VacationSelector

Las Vegas or San Jose?

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

Your match

Las Vegas
✓ Best match
45
match

Wins on sights concentration and nightlife with your weighting.

San Jose
39
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.

The verdict

Choose Las Vegas if you want the walkable concentration of things to see, the wider choice of restaurants and the larger nightlife, and you can travel in spring or autumn rather than midsummer, when highs reach 40°C.

Choose San Jose if you want steady daytime highs of 15-27°C, more park space near the centre and a beach within reach.

Scoreboard

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

Las VegasSan Jose
Beaches & swimming. San Jose leads by 8 points.8
Las VegasSan Jose
Score08
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km01
Coast distance372 km14 km
Water distance—14 km
Places to eat. Las Vegas leads by 21 points.21
Las VegasSan Jose
Score6241
Restaurants within 2 km of centre915313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2416
Museums & heritage. San Jose leads by 7 points.7
Las VegasSan Jose
Score1926
Museums within 10 km2420
Museums within 2 km of centre49
Share of museums within 2 km %1745
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Las Vegas leads by 27 points.27
Las VegasSan Jose
Score5831
Drinking venues within 4 km793231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre48588
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6138
Nightclubs within 4 km9016
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 7 points.7
Las VegasSan Jose
Score6370
Protected land share 50 km %5026
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %10091
Park area within 2 km7 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. Las Vegas leads by 1 points.1
Las VegasSan Jose
Score3433
Tourist attractions within 2 km192
Park area within 2 km7 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km42
Sights concentration. Las Vegas leads by 37 points.37
Las VegasSan Jose
Score5114
Notable places within 2 km759
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Las Vegas and San Jose are level on 43.
Las VegasSan Jose
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 13 points.13
Las VegasSan Jose
Score7285
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 40.3 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall1 mm to 21 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months128
0255075100

Where they differ

Las Vegas has many times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, about three times as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens. It also has about three times as many places to drink and many times as many nightclubs, most of them central.

San Jose's advantage is the weather: highs of 15-27°C year-round against Las Vegas's 14-40°C, so no month is uncomfortably hot. It also has far more park space near the centre, and one beach nearby.

Where they are alike

Both suit families about equally: Las Vegas has many times as many tourist attractions near the centre and 4 theme parks within reach against San Jose's 2, while San Jose has far more park space close to the centre.

Neither is a museum trip: neither has a UNESCO-listed place within day-trip reach, though San Jose's cluster more tightly. Neither is a swimming trip either, San Jose's one beach never warms past 15°C. Both have protected land around them.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone travelling for food and late nights should take Las Vegas: about three times as many restaurants and drinking places near the centre, many times as many nightclubs, and most of them within walking distance.

Walkers and day-trippers can go either way: half the land around Las Vegas is protected against a quarter around San Jose, but San Jose has far more park space you can reach on foot from the centre.

Families sensitive to heat are better off in San Jose, where highs stay at 15-27°C all year. Las Vegas offers more attractions and more theme parks near the centre, but summer highs hit 40°C.

What the numbers don't tell you

The two carry the same value figure because it is a national price level, identical for any two cities in this country, so it says nothing about which trip costs less. There is no daily budget figure here for either city, so no cost comparison between them is possible at all: plan on checking prices yourself.

Sunshine hours are not recorded near either city, so that side of the weather comparison is unmeasured; the monthly picture rests on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature. And San Jose's edge on beaches is one beach with sea at 12-15°C, which is not swimming water.

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 Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Las Vegas
No coastline within reach
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Las Vegas
14
21
11
5
2
1
9
8
8
8
8
11
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Las Vegas
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
San Jose
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 Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Las Vegas is best in spring and autumn: April and October bring highs of 26-27°C with rain at 5-8mm, so timing there is about heat rather than wet weather. Midsummer is the problem, with highs of 39-40°C in July and August.

San Jose is at its steadiest from June to October, with highs of 24-27°C and a summer that is essentially dry. The wet half of the year runs through winter, with February the wettest at 78mm, so those months are worth avoiding.

Getting there

Flying fromLas VegasSan Jose
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
1 h 5 m
€76-164
LAS · 4 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
SJC · 8 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
4 h 55 m
€242-269
LAS · 4 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 40 m
€154-209
LAS · 4 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
2 h 35 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
4 h 35 m
€230-263
1 stop
LAS · 4 km
5 h 15 m
€252-262
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
San DiegoSAN, CLD
1 h 10 m
€90-110
LAS · 4 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
OAK · 56 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
4 h 20 m
€261-438
1 stop
LAS · 4 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
SeoulICN, GMP
12 h 0 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 57 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 15 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
3 h 30 m
no fares
LAS · 4 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
OAK · 56 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 Jose
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 m25 m
Main airportHarry Reid International Airport (LAS)4 km from centre159 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLas VegasSan Jose
City population641,9031,013,240
People per km²1,8432,167
Museums within 10 km2119
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre4930
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 Jose 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.