VacationSelector

New Orleans or San Francisco?

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 museums & heritage with your weighting.

San Francisco
✓ Best match
62
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.

New OrleansSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 21 points.21
New OrleansSan Francisco
Score3960
Swim season months70
Beaches 10 km344
Coast distance21 km2 km
Water distance17 km2 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 22 points.22
New OrleansSan Francisco
Score6183
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8032,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2539
Museums & heritage. New Orleans leads by 1 points.1
New OrleansSan Francisco
Score4544
Museums within 10 km4257
Museums within 2 km of centre3029
Share of museums within 2 km %7151
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 14 points.14
New OrleansSan Francisco
Score5468
Drinking venues within 4 km7041,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre495928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7065
Nightclubs within 4 km4197
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 35 points.35
New OrleansSan Francisco
Score2560
Protected land share 50 km %417
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %8957
Park area within 2 km43 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 11 points.11
New OrleansSan Francisco
Score4657
Tourist attractions within 2 km2248
Park area within 2 km43 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 23 points.23
New OrleansSan Francisco
Score4063
Notable places within 2 km40147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. New Orleans and San Francisco are level on 43.
New OrleansSan Francisco
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 10 points.10
New OrleansSan Francisco
Score6878
Monthly daytime high17.1 °C to 33 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall94 mm to 194 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
New Orleans
17
19
23
26
30
32
33
33
31
27
22
18
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
New Orleans
14
15
18
22
25
29
30
30
28
24
20
16
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
New Orleans
132
104
111
132
143
194
169
180
128
94
98
123
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
New Orleans
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
12
11
10
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. New Orleans: 1991-2020 normals, New Orleans Airport (2.7 km from centre). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromNew OrleansSan Francisco
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 55 m
€254-325
1 stop
MSY · 18 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
2 h 30 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
5 h 15 m
€252-262
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 15 m
€208-268
1 stop
MSY · 18 km
4 h 10 m
€196-293
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
1 h 30 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
3 h 5 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 30 m
€106-150
1 stop
MSY · 18 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DenverDEN, APA
2 h 40 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
BostonBOS, PSM
3 h 15 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
5 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
9 h 25 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
CancunCUN
1 h 55 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
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

MeasureNew OrleansSan Francisco
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 m16 m
Main airportLouis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY)18 km from centre50 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureNew OrleansSan Francisco
City population383,997873,965
People per km²4231,455
Museums within 10 km1650
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre39108
Swim season, months above 21 °C7 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

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