VacationSelector

Lisbon or San Diego?

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

Your match

Lisbon
✓ Best match
68
match

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

San Diego
58
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.

Scoreboard

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

LisbonSan Diego
Beaches & swimming. San Diego leads by 6 points.6
LisbonSan Diego
Score5763
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km2442
Coast distance2 km1 km
Water distance2 km1 km
Places to eat. Lisbon leads by 17 points.17
LisbonSan Diego
Score8063
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,496823
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3127
Museums & heritage. Lisbon leads by 26 points.26
LisbonSan Diego
Score7044
Museums within 10 km12459
Museums within 2 km of centre5430
Share of museums within 2 km %4451
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Lisbon leads by 15 points.15
LisbonSan Diego
Score6550
Drinking venues within 4 km1,225615
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre956408
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7866
Nightclubs within 4 km6531
Nature & day trips. Lisbon leads by 1 points.1
LisbonSan Diego
Score5655
Protected land share 50 km %116
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5452
Park area within 2 km77 hectares308 hectares
Good for families. San Diego leads by 6 points.6
LisbonSan Diego
Score6975
Tourist attractions within 2 km8240
Park area within 2 km77 hectares308 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. Lisbon leads by 26 points.26
LisbonSan Diego
Score6640
Notable places within 2 km16940
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lisbon leads by 31 points.31
LisbonSan Diego
Score7443
Price level global55.9100
Daily budget€109
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 10 points.10
LisbonSan Diego
Score7888
Monthly daytime high14.9 °C to 28.4 °C18.6 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 121 mm0 mm to 56 mm
Dry months49
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
Lisbon
15
16
19
20
23
26
28
28
26
23
18
15
San Diego
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
23
21
19
Sea temperature, °C
Lisbon
15
15
15
15
16
18
18
19
19
18
17
16
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Lisbon
104
73
72
67
53
13
3
7
36
108
121
102
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Daylight, hours per day
Lisbon
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Lisbon
5
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
5
5
San Diego
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lisbon: 1991-2020 normals, Lisboa / Geof (1.1 km from centre). San Diego: 1991-2020 normals, San Diego International Airport (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLisbonSan Diego
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 30 m
€112-185
LIS · 7 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 0 m
€621-718
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
BostonBOS, PSM
6 h 40 m
€649-673
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
5 h 35 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
San FranciscoSFO
11 h 25 m
no fares
LIS · 7 km
1 h 30 m
€121-158
SAN · 3 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 50 m
€167-189
LIS · 7 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
7 h 25 m
no fares
LIS · 7 km
4 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
8 h 15 m
no fares
LIS · 7 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
MunichMUC
3 h 0 m
€222-263
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
12 h 5 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 25 m
no fares
LIS · 7 km
50 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
8 h 25 m
no fares
LIS · 7 km
4 h 45 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 2026-08 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

MeasureLisbonSan Diego
Official languagePortuguese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation100 m129 m
Main airportLisbon Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS)7 km from centre153 non-stop destinationsSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLisbonSan Diego
City population545,7961,386,932
People per km²5,4531,438
Museums within 10 km7826
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre10644
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lisbon 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.