VacationSelector

Lisbon or San Sebastian?

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 good for families and museums & heritage with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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 Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. Lisbon leads by 2 points.2
LisbonSan Sebastian
Score5755
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km2410
Coast distance2 km0 km
Water distance2 km0 km
Places to eat. Lisbon leads by 25 points.25
LisbonSan Sebastian
Score8055
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,496472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3126
Museums & heritage. Lisbon leads by 31 points.31
LisbonSan Sebastian
Score7039
Museums within 10 km12417
Museums within 2 km of centre547
Share of museums within 2 km %4441
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Lisbon leads by 25 points.25
LisbonSan Sebastian
Score6540
Drinking venues within 4 km1,225388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre956338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7887
Nightclubs within 4 km6512
Nature & day trips. Lisbon and San Sebastian are level on 56.
LisbonSan Sebastian
Score5656
Protected land share 50 km %1111
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5452
Park area within 2 km77 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Lisbon leads by 39 points.39
LisbonSan Sebastian
Score6930
Tourist attractions within 2 km825
Park area within 2 km77 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Lisbon leads by 12 points.12
LisbonSan Sebastian
Score6654
Notable places within 2 km16989
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lisbon leads by 3 points.3
LisbonSan Sebastian
Score7471
Price level global55.960.8
Daily budget€109€122
Year-round weather. Lisbon leads by 20 points.20
LisbonSan Sebastian
Score7858
Monthly daytime high14.9 °C to 28.4 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 121 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months40
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 Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Lisbon
15
15
15
15
16
18
18
19
19
18
17
16
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Lisbon
104
73
72
67
53
13
3
7
36
108
121
102
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Lisbon
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Lisbon
5
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
5
5
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. Lisbon: 1991-2020 normals, Lisboa / Geof (1.1 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLisbonSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€118-145
LIS · 7 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
€64-74
LIS · 7 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 30 m
€112-185
LIS · 7 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 50 m
€167-189
LIS · 7 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€164-250
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MunichMUC
3 h 0 m
€222-263
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 50 m
€74-97
LIS · 7 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 50 m
no fares
LIS · 7 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 0 m
€621-718
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 35 m
€95-118
LIS · 7 km
2 h 15 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

MeasureLisbonSan Sebastian
Official languagePortugueseSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation100 m6 m
Main airportLisbon Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS)7 km from centre153 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLisbonSan Sebastian
City population545,796189,866
People per km²5,4533,118
Museums within 10 km7814
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre10645
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone2 months

Where else could you go?

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