VacationSelector

Miami or San Francisco?

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

Your match

Miami
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

San Francisco
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on museums & heritage 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.

MiamiSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. Miami leads by 35 points.35
MiamiSan Francisco
Score9560
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km2044
Coast distance1 km2 km
Water distance1 km2 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 18 points.18
MiamiSan Francisco
Score6583
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8982,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2939
Museums & heritage. San Francisco leads by 21 points.21
MiamiSan Francisco
Score2344
Museums within 10 km2857
Museums within 2 km of centre629
Share of museums within 2 km %2151
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 18 points.18
MiamiSan Francisco
Score5068
Drinking venues within 4 km5381,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre287928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5365
Nightclubs within 4 km6397
Nature & day trips. Miami leads by 12 points.12
MiamiSan Francisco
Score7260
Protected land share 50 km %1617
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %4857
Park area within 2 km50 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 13 points.13
MiamiSan Francisco
Score4457
Tourist attractions within 2 km1448
Park area within 2 km50 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 21 points.21
MiamiSan Francisco
Score4263
Notable places within 2 km45147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Miami and San Francisco are level on 43.
MiamiSan Francisco
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 4 points.4
MiamiSan Francisco
Score7478
Monthly daytime high24.7 °C to 32.7 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 267 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months07
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
Miami
25
26
27
29
31
32
33
33
32
30
28
26
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Miami
25
25
25
26
27
28
29
30
29
28
27
26
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Miami
47
55
63
85
157
267
186
242
259
193
90
62
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Miami
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
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. Miami: 1991-2020 normals, Miami International Airport (10 km from centre). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMiamiSan Francisco
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 45 m
€205-247
MIA · 7 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 45 m
€144-205
MIA · 7 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 55 m
€143-193
MIA · 7 km
4 h 10 m
€196-293
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
MinneapolisMSP, STP
3 h 30 m
€145-181
1 stop
MIA · 7 km
3 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
3 h 0 m
€202-362
MIA · 7 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 50 m
€97-175
MIA · 7 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
2 h 25 m
€127-180
MIA · 7 km
5 h 15 m
€252-262
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
AustinAUS
2 h 45 m
no fares
MIA · 7 km
3 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
9 h 0 m
€550-628
1 stop
MIA · 7 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
15 h 30 m
€891-1074
2 stops
MIA · 7 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 2026-08 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

MeasureMiamiSan Francisco
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation2 m16 m
Main airportMiami International Airport (MIA)7 km from centre199 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMiamiSan Francisco
City population442,241873,965
People per km²3,0461,455
Museums within 10 km1750
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
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 Miami 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.