VacationSelector

Mexico City or San Sebastian?

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

Your match

Mexico City
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nightlife with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on 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.

Mexico CitySan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 55 points.55
Mexico CitySan Sebastian
Score055
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km410
Coast distance247 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Mexico City leads by 11 points.11
Mexico CitySan Sebastian
Score6655
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,179472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1526
Museums & heritage. Mexico City leads by 40 points.40
Mexico CitySan Sebastian
Score7939
Museums within 10 km13817
Museums within 2 km of centre657
Share of museums within 2 km %4741
Unesco sites within 50 km63
Nightlife. Mexico City leads by 38 points.38
Mexico CitySan Sebastian
Score7840
Drinking venues within 4 km2,156388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre926338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4387
Nightclubs within 4 km19812
Nature & day trips. Mexico City leads by 7 points.7
Mexico CitySan Sebastian
Score6356
Protected land share 50 km %3011
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10052
Park area within 2 km32 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Mexico City leads by 20 points.20
Mexico CitySan Sebastian
Score5030
Tourist attractions within 2 km235
Park area within 2 km32 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Mexico City and San Sebastian are level on 54.
Mexico CitySan Sebastian
Score5454
Notable places within 2 km8889
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Mexico City leads by 5 points.5
Mexico CitySan Sebastian
Score7671
Price level global54.260.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Mexico City leads by 32 points.32
Mexico CitySan Sebastian
Score9058
Monthly daytime high22.2 °C to 27.9 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 186 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
Mexico City
22
25
26
28
27
26
25
25
24
23
23
22
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Mexico City
No coastline within reach
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Mexico City
7
3
19
27
53
127
176
186
144
79
10
9
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Mexico City
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Mexico City
8
8
9
8
8
6
6
6
5
6
7
7
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. Mexico City: 1991-2020 normals, Mexico Central, D. F. (7.9 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMexico CitySan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 30 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 30 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
MunichMUC
12 h 15 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 55 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
11 h 20 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
BarcelonaBCN
11 h 50 m
€883-934
2 stops
MEX · 7 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
4 h 40 m
€335-379
MEX · 7 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 10 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
14 h 5 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 75 km
RomeFCO, CIA
12 h 40 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
2 h 10 m
€77-99
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 2026-09 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

MeasureMexico CitySan Sebastian
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec MayaSpanish
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation2,240 m6 m
Main airportMexico City Benito Juárez International Airport (MEX)7 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMexico CitySan Sebastian
City population9,209,944189,866
People per km²6,2023,118
Museums within 10 km10814
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km63
Distinct cuisines in the centre5045
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months

Where else could you go?

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