VacationSelector

Lucerne or San Francisco?

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

Your match

Lucerne
33
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

San Francisco
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife 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.

LucerneSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 60 points.60
LucerneSan Francisco
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1644
Coast distance669 km2 km
Water distance2 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 36 points.36
LucerneSan Francisco
Score4783
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2692,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2539
Museums & heritage. San Francisco leads by 4 points.4
LucerneSan Francisco
Score4044
Museums within 10 km2357
Museums within 2 km of centre1329
Share of museums within 2 km %5751
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 40 points.40
LucerneSan Francisco
Score2868
Drinking venues within 4 km2021,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre151928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7565
Nightclubs within 4 km1197
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 35 points.35
LucerneSan Francisco
Score2560
Protected land share 50 km %717
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %10057
Park area within 2 km29 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 19 points.19
LucerneSan Francisco
Score3857
Tourist attractions within 2 km1548
Park area within 2 km29 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 28 points.28
LucerneSan Francisco
Score3563
Notable places within 2 km29147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Francisco leads by 8 points.8
LucerneSan Francisco
Score3543
Price level global110.5100
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 25 points.25
LucerneSan Francisco
Score5378
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 24.3 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall60 mm to 128 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months07
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
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1
San Francisco
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLucerneSan Francisco
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 49 km
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
9 h 5 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
4 h 10 m
€196-293
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 49 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
11 h 0 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

MeasureLucerneSan Francisco
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation436 m16 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLucerneSan Francisco
City population86,234873,965
People per km²2,9631,455
Museums within 10 km1450
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre46108
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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