VacationSelector

Lucerne or San Sebastian?

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 good for families and museums & heritage with your weighting.

San Sebastian
✓ Best match
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.

LucerneSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 55 points.55
LucerneSan Sebastian
Score055
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km1610
Coast distance669 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. San Sebastian leads by 8 points.8
LucerneSan Sebastian
Score4755
Restaurants within 2 km of centre269472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2526
Museums & heritage. Lucerne leads by 1 points.1
LucerneSan Sebastian
Score4039
Museums within 10 km2317
Museums within 2 km of centre137
Share of museums within 2 km %5741
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. San Sebastian leads by 12 points.12
LucerneSan Sebastian
Score2840
Drinking venues within 4 km202388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre151338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7587
Nightclubs within 4 km1112
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 31 points.31
LucerneSan Sebastian
Score2556
Protected land share 50 km %711
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10052
Park area within 2 km29 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Lucerne leads by 8 points.8
LucerneSan Sebastian
Score3830
Tourist attractions within 2 km155
Park area within 2 km29 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 19 points.19
LucerneSan Sebastian
Score3554
Notable places within 2 km2989
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 36 points.36
LucerneSan Sebastian
Score3571
Price level global110.560.8
Daily budget€248€122
Year-round weather. San Sebastian leads by 5 points.5
LucerneSan Sebastian
Score5358
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 24.3 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall60 mm to 128 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months00
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 Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1
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. Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLucerneSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 50 m
€84-103
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
MunichMUC
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 15 m
no fares
BSL · 85 km
2 h 15 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 2026-09, 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 Sebastian
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshSpanish
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation436 m6 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLucerneSan Sebastian
City population86,234189,866
People per km²2,9633,118
Museums within 10 km1414
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre4645
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 Lucerne 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). 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.