VacationSelector

Lima or San Jose?

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

Your match

Lima
✓ Best match
55
match

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

San Jose
39
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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 Jose
Beaches & swimming. Lima leads by 29 points.29
LimaSan Jose
Score378
Swim season months20
Beaches 10 km121
Coast distance6 km14 km
Water distance6 km14 km
Places to eat. Lima leads by 11 points.11
LimaSan Jose
Score5241
Restaurants within 2 km of centre796313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1416
Museums & heritage. Lima leads by 38 points.38
LimaSan Jose
Score6426
Museums within 10 km8920
Museums within 2 km of centre479
Share of museums within 2 km %5345
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Lima leads by 14 points.14
LimaSan Jose
Score4531
Drinking venues within 4 km409231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre17788
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4338
Nightclubs within 4 km6316
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 43 points.43
LimaSan Jose
Score2770
Protected land share 50 km %226
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %5191
Park area within 2 km54 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. Lima leads by 23 points.23
LimaSan Jose
Score5633
Tourist attractions within 2 km252
Park area within 2 km54 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km42
Sights concentration. Lima leads by 32 points.32
LimaSan Jose
Score4614
Notable places within 2 km549
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lima leads by 37 points.37
LimaSan Jose
Score8043
Price level global47.7100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Lima leads by 7 points.7
LimaSan Jose
Score9285
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 27.4 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 1 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months128
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 Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Lima
21
22
21
20
19
18
18
17
17
17
18
19
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Lima
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Lima
13
13
12
12
12
11
12
12
12
12
13
13
San Jose
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 Jose
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 Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLimaSan Jose
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
8 h 0 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
12 h 45 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
8 h 35 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
SJC · 8 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
5 h 40 m
€348-370
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
OAK · 56 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
6 h 45 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
SJC · 8 km
MadridMAD
11 h 50 m
€895-903
LIM · 9 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
MiamiMIA, OPF
5 h 40 m
€403-426
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
5 h 35 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
Salt Lake CitySLC
8 h 45 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
SJC · 8 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
8 h 10 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
5 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 57 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 Jose
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 m25 m
Main airportJorge Chávez International Airport (LIM)9 km from centre63 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLimaSan Jose
City population9,943,8001,013,240
People per km²3,7212,167
Museums within 10 km4619
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre3330
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 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. 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.