VacationSelector

London or San Francisco?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

London
64
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nightlife with your weighting.

San Francisco
62
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and 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.

LondonSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 60 points.60
LondonSan Francisco
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km4744
Coast distance43 km2 km
Water distance—2 km
Places to eat. London leads by 5 points.5
LondonSan Francisco
Score8883
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,3172,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4039
Museums & heritage. London leads by 28 points.28
LondonSan Francisco
Score7244
Museums within 10 km14857
Museums within 2 km of centre4929
Share of museums within 2 km %3351
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. London leads by 27 points.27
LondonSan Francisco
Score9568
Drinking venues within 4 km5,3271,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,443928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4665
Nightclubs within 4 km31297
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 20 points.20
LondonSan Francisco
Score4060
Protected land share 50 km %1617
Landscape blanket share 50 km %144
Land share of disc %9757
Park area within 2 km84 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 18 points.18
LondonSan Francisco
Score7557
Tourist attractions within 2 km8548
Park area within 2 km84 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. London leads by 26 points.26
LondonSan Francisco
Score8963
Notable places within 2 km649147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. London leads by 11 points.11
LondonSan Francisco
Score5443
Price level global84.9100
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 15 points.15
LondonSan Francisco
Score6378
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 23.8 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 67 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months17
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 Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
London
No coastline within reach
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
2
2
San Francisco
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 Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLondonSan Francisco
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 55 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 5 m
€92-144
LHR · 23 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
10 h 35 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€61-144
LGW · 40 km
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 5 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
9 h 40 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
9 h 35 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 10 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
CancunCUN
10 h 5 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 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 Francisco
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 m16 m
Main airportLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLondonSan Francisco
City population8,799,728873,965
People per km²5,5981,455
Museums within 10 km21550
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre116108
Swim season, months above 21 °C–None

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow London or San Francisco 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.