VacationSelector

London or San Sebastian?

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 nightlife and good for families with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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 Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 55 points.55
LondonSan Sebastian
Score055
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km4710
Coast distance43 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. London leads by 33 points.33
LondonSan Sebastian
Score8855
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,317472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4026
Museums & heritage. London leads by 33 points.33
LondonSan Sebastian
Score7239
Museums within 10 km14817
Museums within 2 km of centre497
Share of museums within 2 km %3341
Unesco sites within 50 km43
Nightlife. London leads by 55 points.55
LondonSan Sebastian
Score9540
Drinking venues within 4 km5,327388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,443338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4687
Nightclubs within 4 km31212
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 16 points.16
LondonSan Sebastian
Score4056
Protected land share 50 km %1611
Landscape blanket share 50 km %140
Land share of disc %9752
Park area within 2 km84 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 45 points.45
LondonSan Sebastian
Score7530
Tourist attractions within 2 km855
Park area within 2 km84 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. London leads by 35 points.35
LondonSan Sebastian
Score8954
Notable places within 2 km64989
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 17 points.17
LondonSan Sebastian
Score5471
Price level global84.960.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. London leads by 5 points.5
LondonSan Sebastian
Score6358
Monthly daytime high8.2 °C to 23.8 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 67 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months10
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 Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
London
No coastline within reach
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
2
2
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. London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLondonSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 5 m
€92-144
LHR · 23 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
€79-116
LGW · 40 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 5 m
€146-170
LHR · 23 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 5 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 20 m
€66-100
LGW · 40 km
1 h 20 m
€81-137
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
€124-216
LHR · 23 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
MunichMUC
1 h 45 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 25 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 20 m
€128-183
1 stop
LGW · 40 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
7 h 20 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

MeasureLondonSan Sebastian
Official languageEnglishSpanish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation4 m6 m
Main airportLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLondonSan Sebastian
City population8,799,728189,866
People per km²5,5983,118
Museums within 10 km21514
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km43
Distinct cuisines in the centre11645
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months

Where else could you go?

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