VacationSelector

Lima or San Francisco?

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 Francisco
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on nature & day trips and places to eat 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 Francisco
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 23 points.23
LimaSan Francisco
Score3760
Swim season months20
Beaches 10 km1244
Coast distance6 km2 km
Water distance6 km2 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 31 points.31
LimaSan Francisco
Score5283
Restaurants within 2 km of centre7962,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1439
Museums & heritage. Lima leads by 20 points.20
LimaSan Francisco
Score6444
Museums within 10 km8957
Museums within 2 km of centre4729
Share of museums within 2 km %5351
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 23 points.23
LimaSan Francisco
Score4568
Drinking venues within 4 km4091,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre177928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4365
Nightclubs within 4 km6397
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 33 points.33
LimaSan Francisco
Score2760
Protected land share 50 km %217
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %5157
Park area within 2 km54 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 1 points.1
LimaSan Francisco
Score5657
Tourist attractions within 2 km2548
Park area within 2 km54 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 17 points.17
LimaSan Francisco
Score4663
Notable places within 2 km54147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lima leads by 37 points.37
LimaSan Francisco
Score8043
Price level global47.7100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Lima leads by 14 points.14
LimaSan Francisco
Score9278
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 27.4 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 1 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months127
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 Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Lima
21
22
21
20
19
18
18
17
17
17
18
19
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Lima
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Lima
13
13
12
12
12
11
12
12
12
12
13
13
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Lima
5
5
6
6
3
1
1
1
1
2
3
4
San Francisco
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 Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLimaSan Francisco
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
8 h 0 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
6 h 45 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
5 h 40 m
€348-370
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
OAK · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
12 h 45 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
MadridMAD
11 h 50 m
€895-903
LIM · 9 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
MiamiMIA, OPF
5 h 40 m
€403-426
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
5 h 35 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
8 h 35 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
OAK · 18 km
BarcelonaBCN
12 h 25 m
€898-998
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
8 h 10 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
5 h 30 m
no fares
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 2026-09, 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 Francisco
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 m16 m
Main airportJorge Chávez International Airport (LIM)9 km from centre63 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLimaSan Francisco
City population9,943,800873,965
People per km²3,7211,455
Museums within 10 km4650
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre33108
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lima 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). 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.