VacationSelector

Lima or San Sebastian?

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 year-round weather and good for families with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
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 Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 18 points.18
LimaSan Sebastian
Score3755
Swim season months22
Beaches 10 km1210
Coast distance6 km0 km
Water distance6 km0 km
Places to eat. San Sebastian leads by 3 points.3
LimaSan Sebastian
Score5255
Restaurants within 2 km of centre796472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1426
Museums & heritage. Lima leads by 25 points.25
LimaSan Sebastian
Score6439
Museums within 10 km8917
Museums within 2 km of centre477
Share of museums within 2 km %5341
Unesco sites within 50 km23
Nightlife. Lima leads by 5 points.5
LimaSan Sebastian
Score4540
Drinking venues within 4 km409388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre177338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4387
Nightclubs within 4 km6312
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 29 points.29
LimaSan Sebastian
Score2756
Protected land share 50 km %211
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5152
Park area within 2 km54 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Lima leads by 26 points.26
LimaSan Sebastian
Score5630
Tourist attractions within 2 km255
Park area within 2 km54 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 8 points.8
LimaSan Sebastian
Score4654
Notable places within 2 km5489
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lima leads by 9 points.9
LimaSan Sebastian
Score8071
Price level global47.760.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Lima leads by 34 points.34
LimaSan Sebastian
Score9258
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 27.4 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 1 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months120
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 Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Lima
21
22
21
20
19
18
18
17
17
17
18
19
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Lima
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Lima
13
13
12
12
12
11
12
12
12
12
13
13
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Lima
5
5
6
6
3
1
1
1
1
2
3
4
San Sebastian
3
4
5
5
7
6
7
6
6
5
3
3

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 Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLimaSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
12 h 45 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
MadridMAD
11 h 50 m
€895-903
LIM · 9 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
AmsterdamAMS
13 h 5 m
€876-946
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
BarcelonaBCN
12 h 25 m
€898-998
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 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

MeasureLimaSan Sebastian
Official languageSpanish, Aymara, QuechuaSpanish
CurrencySol (PEN)Euro (EUR)
SocketsABC220 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number111 or 911112
Elevation154 m6 m
Main airportJorge Chávez International Airport (LIM)9 km from centre63 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLimaSan Sebastian
City population9,943,800189,866
People per km²3,7213,118
Museums within 10 km4614
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km23
Distinct cuisines in the centre3345
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lima or San Sebastian 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.