VacationSelector

London or San Diego?

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

Your match

London
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on sights concentration and nightlife with your weighting.

San Diego
58
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

LondonSan Diego
Beaches & swimming. San Diego leads by 63 points.63
LondonSan Diego
Score063
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km4742
Coast distance43 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. London leads by 25 points.25
LondonSan Diego
Score8863
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,317823
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4027
Museums & heritage. London leads by 28 points.28
LondonSan Diego
Score7244
Museums within 10 km14859
Museums within 2 km of centre4930
Share of museums within 2 km %3351
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. London leads by 45 points.45
LondonSan Diego
Score9550
Drinking venues within 4 km5,327615
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,443408
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4666
Nightclubs within 4 km31231
Nature & day trips. San Diego leads by 15 points.15
LondonSan Diego
Score4055
Protected land share 50 km %166
Landscape blanket share 50 km %140
Land share of disc %9752
Park area within 2 km84 hectares308 hectares
Good for families. London and San Diego are level on 75.
LondonSan Diego
Score7575
Tourist attractions within 2 km8540
Park area within 2 km84 hectares308 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km33
Sights concentration. London leads by 49 points.49
LondonSan Diego
Score8940
Notable places within 2 km64940
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. London leads by 11 points.11
LondonSan Diego
Score5443
Price level global84.9100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 25 points.25
LondonSan Diego
Score6388
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 23.8 °C18.6 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 67 mm0 mm to 56 mm
Dry months19
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
London
8
9
12
15
18
22
24
23
20
16
11
9
San Diego
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
23
21
19
Sea temperature, °C
London
No coastline within reach
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Rainfall, mm
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Daylight, hours per day
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
2
2
San Diego
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre). San Diego: 1991-2020 normals, San Diego International Airport (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLondonSan Diego
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
San FranciscoSFO
10 h 50 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
1 h 30 m
€121-158
SAN · 3 km
Las VegasLAS
10 h 35 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
DenverDEN, APA
9 h 30 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
2 h 15 m
€64-224
SAN · 3 km
BostonBOS, PSM
6 h 50 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
5 h 35 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
8 h 10 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
9 h 40 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 5 m
€146-170
LHR · 23 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 55 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
CancunCUN
10 h 5 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
4 h 30 m
no fares
TIJ · 26 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

MeasureLondonSan Diego
Official languageEnglish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999911
Elevation4 m129 m
Main airportLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinationsSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLondonSan Diego
City population8,799,7281,386,932
People per km²5,5981,438
Museums within 10 km21526
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre11644
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow London 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. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.