VacationSelector

Manila or San Francisco?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Manila
60
match

Wins on value for money and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

San Francisco
62
match

Wins on nature & day trips and places to eat 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.

ManilaSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. Manila leads by 16 points.16
ManilaSan Francisco
Score7660
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km344
Coast distance2 km2 km
Water distance2 km2 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 25 points.25
ManilaSan Francisco
Score5883
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0152,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1739
Museums & heritage. Manila leads by 6 points.6
ManilaSan Francisco
Score5044
Museums within 10 km7757
Museums within 2 km of centre2329
Share of museums within 2 km %3051
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 7 points.7
ManilaSan Francisco
Score6168
Drinking venues within 4 km1,0821,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre374928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3565
Nightclubs within 4 km3697
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 31 points.31
ManilaSan Francisco
Score2960
Protected land share 50 km %417
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %7857
Park area within 2 km54 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. Manila leads by 3 points.3
ManilaSan Francisco
Score6057
Tourist attractions within 2 km3748
Park area within 2 km54 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 11 points.11
ManilaSan Francisco
Score5263
Notable places within 2 km79147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Manila leads by 47 points.47
ManilaSan Francisco
Score9043
Price level global33.7100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 17 points.17
ManilaSan Francisco
Score6178
Monthly daytime high30.5 °C to 34.6 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall24 mm to 564 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months47
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
Manila
31
31
33
35
34
33
32
31
31
32
31
31
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Manila
27
27
28
29
30
30
29
29
29
29
28
28
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Manila
26
24
40
36
220
314
487
564
509
297
152
109
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Manila
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Manila: 1991-2020 normals, Science Garden (6 km from centre). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromManilaSan Francisco
TokyoHND, NRT
4 h 10 m
€304-317
MNL · 11 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
SeoulICN, GMP
3 h 45 m
€191-223
MNL · 11 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 18 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
13 h 5 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
16 h 45 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
Hong KongHKG
2 h 0 m
€128-135
MNL · 11 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
13 h 20 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
3 h 30 m
€154-174
MNL · 11 km
16 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
Ho Chi Minh CitySGN
2 h 35 m
€142-175
MNL · 11 km
15 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
16 h 15 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
8 h 45 m
€428-448
MNL · 11 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
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 2026-09 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

MeasureManilaSan Francisco
Official languageEnglish, Filipino, Taglish
CurrencyPhilippine Peso (PHP)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsABC220 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation9 m16 m
Main airportNinoy Aquino International Airport (MNL)11 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year18 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureManilaSan Francisco
City population1,902,590873,965
People per km²76,1041,455
Museums within 10 km2750
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre39108
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Manila 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. 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.