VacationSelector

Lucerne or San Jose?

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

Your match

Lucerne
33
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage with your weighting.

San Jose
✓ Best match
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.

LucerneSan Jose
Beaches & swimming. San Jose leads by 8 points.8
LucerneSan Jose
Score08
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km161
Coast distance669 km14 km
Water distance14 km
Places to eat. Lucerne leads by 6 points.6
LucerneSan Jose
Score4741
Restaurants within 2 km of centre269313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2516
Museums & heritage. Lucerne leads by 14 points.14
LucerneSan Jose
Score4026
Museums within 10 km2320
Museums within 2 km of centre139
Share of museums within 2 km %5745
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. San Jose leads by 3 points.3
LucerneSan Jose
Score2831
Drinking venues within 4 km202231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre15188
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7538
Nightclubs within 4 km1116
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 45 points.45
LucerneSan Jose
Score2570
Protected land share 50 km %726
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %10091
Park area within 2 km29 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. Lucerne leads by 5 points.5
LucerneSan Jose
Score3833
Tourist attractions within 2 km152
Park area within 2 km29 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Lucerne leads by 21 points.21
LucerneSan Jose
Score3514
Notable places within 2 km299
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Jose leads by 8 points.8
LucerneSan Jose
Score3543
Price level global110.5100
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 32 points.32
LucerneSan Jose
Score5385
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 24.3 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall60 mm to 128 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months08
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 Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
San Jose
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 Jose
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 Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLucerneSan Jose
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 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 · 57 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 57 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
10 h 35 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
10 h 25 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 49 km
13 h 20 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

MeasureLucerneSan Jose
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 m25 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLucerneSan Jose
City population86,2341,013,240
People per km²2,9632,167
Museums within 10 km1419
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre4630
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 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). 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.