VacationSelector

Manila or San Sebastian?

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 good for families and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on nature & day trips and sights concentration 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 Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. Manila leads by 21 points.21
ManilaSan Sebastian
Score7655
Swim season months122
Beaches 10 km310
Coast distance2 km0 km
Water distance2 km0 km
Places to eat. Manila leads by 3 points.3
ManilaSan Sebastian
Score5855
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,015472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1726
Museums & heritage. Manila leads by 11 points.11
ManilaSan Sebastian
Score5039
Museums within 10 km7717
Museums within 2 km of centre237
Share of museums within 2 km %3041
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Manila leads by 21 points.21
ManilaSan Sebastian
Score6140
Drinking venues within 4 km1,082388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre374338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3587
Nightclubs within 4 km3612
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 27 points.27
ManilaSan Sebastian
Score2956
Protected land share 50 km %411
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7852
Park area within 2 km54 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Manila leads by 30 points.30
ManilaSan Sebastian
Score6030
Tourist attractions within 2 km375
Park area within 2 km54 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 2 points.2
ManilaSan Sebastian
Score5254
Notable places within 2 km7989
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Manila leads by 19 points.19
ManilaSan Sebastian
Score9071
Price level global33.760.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Manila leads by 3 points.3
ManilaSan Sebastian
Score6158
Monthly daytime high30.5 °C to 34.6 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall24 mm to 564 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months40
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 Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Manila
27
27
28
29
30
30
29
29
29
29
28
28
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Manila
26
24
40
36
220
314
487
564
509
297
152
109
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Manila
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Manila
No sunshine record
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. Manila: 1991-2020 normals, Science Garden (6 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromManilaSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
13 h 20 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
12 h 55 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
11 h 25 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 75 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
16 h 45 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
7 h 20 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 2026-10, 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 Sebastian
Official languageEnglish, Filipino, TaglishSpanish
CurrencyPhilippine Peso (PHP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsABC220 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation9 m6 m
Main airportNinoy Aquino International Airport (MNL)11 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year18 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureManilaSan Sebastian
City population1,902,590189,866
People per km²76,1043,118
Museums within 10 km2714
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre3945
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Manila 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. 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.