VacationSelector

Lima or San Diego?

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

Your match

Lima
55
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage with your weighting.

San Diego
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

LimaSan Diego
Beaches & swimming. San Diego leads by 26 points.26
LimaSan Diego
Score3763
Swim season months21
Beaches 10 km1242
Coast distance6 km1 km
Water distance6 km1 km
Places to eat. San Diego leads by 11 points.11
LimaSan Diego
Score5263
Restaurants within 2 km of centre796823
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1427
Museums & heritage. Lima leads by 20 points.20
LimaSan Diego
Score6444
Museums within 10 km8959
Museums within 2 km of centre4730
Share of museums within 2 km %5351
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. San Diego leads by 5 points.5
LimaSan Diego
Score4550
Drinking venues within 4 km409615
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre177408
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4366
Nightclubs within 4 km6331
Nature & day trips. San Diego leads by 28 points.28
LimaSan Diego
Score2755
Protected land share 50 km %26
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5152
Park area within 2 km54 hectares308 hectares
Good for families. San Diego leads by 19 points.19
LimaSan Diego
Score5675
Tourist attractions within 2 km2540
Park area within 2 km54 hectares308 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km43
Sights concentration. Lima leads by 6 points.6
LimaSan Diego
Score4640
Notable places within 2 km5440
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lima leads by 37 points.37
LimaSan Diego
Score8043
Price level global47.7100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Lima leads by 4 points.4
LimaSan Diego
Score9288
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 27.4 °C18.6 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 1 mm0 mm to 56 mm
Dry months129
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
Lima
26
27
27
25
22
20
19
19
19
20
22
24
San Diego
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
23
21
19
Sea temperature, °C
Lima
21
22
21
20
19
18
18
17
17
17
18
19
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Lima
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Daylight, hours per day
Lima
13
13
12
12
12
11
12
12
12
12
13
13
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Lima
5
5
6
6
3
1
1
1
1
2
3
4
San Diego
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lima: 1991-2020 normals, Lima-Callao / Aerop. Internacional Jorgechavez (10.9 km from centre). San Diego: 1991-2020 normals, San Diego International Airport (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLimaSan Diego
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
8 h 35 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
50 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
MiamiMIA, OPF
5 h 40 m
€403-426
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
4 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
5 h 40 m
€348-370
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
TIJ · 26 km
Salt Lake CitySLC
8 h 45 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
8 h 10 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
5 h 20 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
8 h 0 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
6 h 45 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
AmsterdamAMS
13 h 5 m
€876-946
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
6 h 35 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
SAN · 3 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

MeasureLimaSan Diego
Official languageSpanish, Aymara, Quechua
CurrencySol (PEN)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsABC220 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5UTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number111 or 911911
Elevation154 m129 m
Main airportJorge Chávez International Airport (LIM)9 km from centre63 non-stop destinationsSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLimaSan Diego
City population9,943,8001,386,932
People per km²3,7211,438
Museums within 10 km4626
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre3344
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lima 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.