VacationSelector

Manila or San Jose?

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

Your match

Manila
✓ Best match
60
match

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

San Jose
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.

ManilaSan Jose
Beaches & swimming. Manila leads by 68 points.68
ManilaSan Jose
Score768
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km31
Coast distance2 km14 km
Water distance2 km14 km
Places to eat. Manila leads by 17 points.17
ManilaSan Jose
Score5841
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,015313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1716
Museums & heritage. Manila leads by 24 points.24
ManilaSan Jose
Score5026
Museums within 10 km7720
Museums within 2 km of centre239
Share of museums within 2 km %3045
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Manila leads by 30 points.30
ManilaSan Jose
Score6131
Drinking venues within 4 km1,082231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre37488
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3538
Nightclubs within 4 km3616
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 41 points.41
ManilaSan Jose
Score2970
Protected land share 50 km %426
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %7891
Park area within 2 km54 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. Manila leads by 27 points.27
ManilaSan Jose
Score6033
Tourist attractions within 2 km372
Park area within 2 km54 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Manila leads by 38 points.38
ManilaSan Jose
Score5214
Notable places within 2 km799
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Manila leads by 47 points.47
ManilaSan Jose
Score9043
Price level global33.7100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 24 points.24
ManilaSan Jose
Score6185
Monthly daytime high30.5 °C to 34.6 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall24 mm to 564 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months48
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 Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Manila
27
27
28
29
30
30
29
29
29
29
28
28
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Manila
26
24
40
36
220
314
487
564
509
297
152
109
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Manila
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
San Jose
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 Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromManilaSan Jose
TokyoHND, NRT
4 h 10 m
€304-317
MNL · 11 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
SeoulICN, GMP
3 h 45 m
€191-223
MNL · 11 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 57 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
13 h 5 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
16 h 45 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
13 h 20 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
Hong KongHKG
2 h 0 m
€128-135
MNL · 11 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
16 h 15 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
3 h 30 m
€154-174
MNL · 11 km
16 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
Ho Chi Minh CitySGN
2 h 35 m
€142-175
MNL · 11 km
15 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
8 h 45 m
€428-448
MNL · 11 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
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 2026-09 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 Jose
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 m25 m
Main airportNinoy Aquino International Airport (MNL)11 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year18 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureManilaSan Jose
City population1,902,5901,013,240
People per km²76,1042,167
Museums within 10 km2719
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre3930
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 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. 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.