VacationSelector

Manchester or San Diego?

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

Your match

Manchester
47
match

Wins on nightlife and value for money with your weighting.

San Diego
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on good for families and beaches & swimming 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.

ManchesterSan Diego
Beaches & swimming. San Diego leads by 35 points.35
ManchesterSan Diego
Score2863
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km1042
Coast distance27 km1 km
Water distance27 km1 km
Places to eat. Manchester leads by 5 points.5
ManchesterSan Diego
Score6863
Restaurants within 2 km of centre853823
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3527
Museums & heritage. San Diego leads by 2 points.2
ManchesterSan Diego
Score4244
Museums within 10 km2359
Museums within 2 km of centre1130
Share of museums within 2 km %4851
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Manchester leads by 12 points.12
ManchesterSan Diego
Score6250
Drinking venues within 4 km1,029615
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre792408
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7766
Nightclubs within 4 km8231
Nature & day trips. San Diego leads by 19 points.19
ManchesterSan Diego
Score3655
Protected land share 50 km %176
Landscape blanket share 50 km %170
Land share of disc %9952
Park area within 2 km63 hectares308 hectares
Good for families. San Diego leads by 43 points.43
ManchesterSan Diego
Score3275
Tourist attractions within 2 km540
Park area within 2 km63 hectares308 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km23
Sights concentration. Manchester leads by 8 points.8
ManchesterSan Diego
Score4840
Notable places within 2 km6140
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Manchester leads by 11 points.11
ManchesterSan Diego
Score5443
Price level global84.9100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 34 points.34
ManchesterSan Diego
Score5488
Monthly daytime high7.2 °C to 20.8 °C18.6 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall51 mm to 95 mm0 mm to 56 mm
Dry months09
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
Manchester
7
8
10
13
17
19
21
20
18
14
10
8
San Diego
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
23
21
19
Sea temperature, °C
Manchester
7
6
7
9
11
14
16
17
16
14
11
9
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Manchester
67
62
51
61
59
63
60
73
71
95
86
84
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Daylight, hours per day
Manchester
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Manchester
2
2
3
5
6
6
6
6
4
3
2
2
San Diego
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Manchester: 1991-2020 normals, Manchester Airport (14.8 km from centre). San Diego: 1991-2020 normals, San Diego International Airport (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromManchesterSan Diego
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
Las VegasLAS
10 h 15 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
MunichMUC
2 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
12 h 5 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
8 h 40 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 10 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 15 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
55 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SAN · 3 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

MeasureManchesterSan Diego
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
Elevation38 m129 m
Main airportManchester Airport (MAN)15 km from centre210 non-stop destinationsSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureManchesterSan Diego
City population547,6271,386,932
People per km²4,7371,438
Museums within 10 km2826
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre6344
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Manchester or San Diego 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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. 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.