VacationSelector

Marseille or San Sebastian?

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

Your match

Marseille
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on places to eat and year-round weather with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

MarseilleSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. Marseille leads by 12 points.12
MarseilleSan Sebastian
Score6755
Swim season months22
Beaches 10 km6410
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Marseille leads by 20 points.20
MarseilleSan Sebastian
Score7555
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,320472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3926
Museums & heritage. Marseille leads by 11 points.11
MarseilleSan Sebastian
Score5039
Museums within 10 km3317
Museums within 2 km of centre237
Share of museums within 2 km %7041
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Marseille leads by 8 points.8
MarseilleSan Sebastian
Score4840
Drinking venues within 4 km544388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre454338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8387
Nightclubs within 4 km3012
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 19 points.19
MarseilleSan Sebastian
Score3756
Protected land share 50 km %1511
Landscape blanket share 50 km %130
Land share of disc %5652
Park area within 2 km25 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Marseille leads by 14 points.14
MarseilleSan Sebastian
Score4430
Tourist attractions within 2 km175
Park area within 2 km25 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Marseille leads by 4 points.4
MarseilleSan Sebastian
Score5854
Notable places within 2 km11189
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 9 points.9
MarseilleSan Sebastian
Score6271
Price level global73.760.8
Daily budget€160€122
Year-round weather. Marseille leads by 17 points.17
MarseilleSan Sebastian
Score7558
Monthly daytime high11.8 °C to 30.7 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall11 mm to 82 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months60
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
Marseille
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
30
26
21
16
12
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Marseille
13
13
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
19
17
15
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Marseille
47
30
29
51
38
28
11
26
82
72
76
41
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Marseille
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Marseille
5
6
8
8
10
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
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. Marseille: 1991-2020 normals, Marseille / Marignane (20.6 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMarseilleSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 25 m
€110-119
MRS · 21 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 50 m
€65-134
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
MunichMUC
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
AlicanteALC
1 h 35 m
€114-174
MRS · 21 km
1 h 20 m
€81-137
BIO · 75 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 55 m
€219-245
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 75 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 21 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 2026-10, 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

MeasureMarseilleSan Sebastian
Official languageFrenchSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m6 m
Main airportMarseille Provence Airport (MRS)21 km from centre125 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMarseilleSan Sebastian
City population886,040189,866
People per km²3,6833,118
Museums within 10 km2714
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre9345
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Marseille 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.