VacationSelector

London or San Jose?

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 Jose
39
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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 Jose
Beaches & swimming. San Jose leads by 8 points.8
LondonSan Jose
Score08
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km471
Coast distance43 km14 km
Water distance14 km
Places to eat. London leads by 47 points.47
LondonSan Jose
Score8841
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,317313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4016
Museums & heritage. London leads by 46 points.46
LondonSan Jose
Score7226
Museums within 10 km14820
Museums within 2 km of centre499
Share of museums within 2 km %3345
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. London leads by 64 points.64
LondonSan Jose
Score9531
Drinking venues within 4 km5,327231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,44388
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4638
Nightclubs within 4 km31216
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 30 points.30
LondonSan Jose
Score4070
Protected land share 50 km %1626
Landscape blanket share 50 km %142
Land share of disc %9791
Park area within 2 km84 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 42 points.42
LondonSan Jose
Score7533
Tourist attractions within 2 km852
Park area within 2 km84 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. London leads by 75 points.75
LondonSan Jose
Score8914
Notable places within 2 km6499
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. London leads by 11 points.11
LondonSan Jose
Score5443
Price level global84.9100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 22 points.22
LondonSan Jose
Score6385
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 23.8 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 67 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months18
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 Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
London
No coastline within reach
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
San Jose
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 Jose
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 Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLondonSan Jose
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 55 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 5 m
€92-144
LHR · 23 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 5 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 57 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
9 h 40 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
9 h 35 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 25 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 25 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 10 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
CancunCUN
10 h 5 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 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 Jose
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 m25 m
Main airportLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLondonSan Jose
City population8,799,7281,013,240
People per km²5,5982,167
Museums within 10 km21519
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre11630
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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