VacationSelector

New Orleans or San Diego?

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

Your match

New Orleans
47
match

Wins on nightlife and museums & heritage with your weighting.

San Diego
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families 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.

New OrleansSan Diego
Beaches & swimming. San Diego leads by 24 points.24
New OrleansSan Diego
Score3963
Swim season months71
Beaches 10 km342
Coast distance21 km1 km
Water distance17 km1 km
Places to eat. San Diego leads by 2 points.2
New OrleansSan Diego
Score6163
Restaurants within 2 km of centre803823
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2527
Museums & heritage. New Orleans leads by 1 points.1
New OrleansSan Diego
Score4544
Museums within 10 km4259
Museums within 2 km of centre3030
Share of museums within 2 km %7151
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. New Orleans leads by 4 points.4
New OrleansSan Diego
Score5450
Drinking venues within 4 km704615
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre495408
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7066
Nightclubs within 4 km4131
Nature & day trips. San Diego leads by 30 points.30
New OrleansSan Diego
Score2555
Protected land share 50 km %46
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8952
Park area within 2 km43 hectares308 hectares
Good for families. San Diego leads by 29 points.29
New OrleansSan Diego
Score4675
Tourist attractions within 2 km2240
Park area within 2 km43 hectares308 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. New Orleans and San Diego are level on 40.
New OrleansSan Diego
Score4040
Notable places within 2 km4040
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. New Orleans and San Diego are level on 43.
New OrleansSan Diego
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 20 points.20
New OrleansSan Diego
Score6888
Monthly daytime high17.1 °C to 33 °C18.6 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall94 mm to 194 mm0 mm to 56 mm
Dry months09
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
New Orleans
17
19
23
26
30
32
33
33
31
27
22
18
San Diego
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
23
21
19
Sea temperature, °C
New Orleans
14
15
18
22
25
29
30
30
28
24
20
16
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Rainfall, mm
New Orleans
132
104
111
132
143
194
169
180
128
94
98
123
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Daylight, hours per day
New Orleans
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
12
11
10
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. New Orleans: 1991-2020 normals, New Orleans Airport (2.7 km from centre). San Diego: 1991-2020 normals, San Diego International Airport (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromNew OrleansSan Diego
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 55 m
€254-325
1 stop
MSY · 18 km
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 15 m
€208-268
1 stop
MSY · 18 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
2 h 30 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
4 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
1 h 30 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
DenverDEN, APA
2 h 40 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
2 h 15 m
€64-224
SAN · 3 km
Las VegasLAS
3 h 30 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
BostonBOS, PSM
3 h 15 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
5 h 35 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
3 h 5 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
CancunCUN
1 h 55 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
4 h 30 m
no fares
TIJ · 26 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
9 h 25 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SAN · 3 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

MeasureNew OrleansSan Diego
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation-2 m129 m
Main airportLouis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY)18 km from centre50 non-stop destinationsSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureNew OrleansSan Diego
City population383,9971,386,932
People per km²4231,438
Museums within 10 km1626
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre3944
Swim season, months above 21 °C7 months1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow New Orleans or San Diego 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.