VacationSelector

New York 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 York
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration with your weighting.

San Diego
58
match

Wins on year-round weather and nature & day trips 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 YorkSan Diego
Beaches & swimming. New York leads by 1 points.1
New YorkSan Diego
Score6463
Swim season months31
Beaches 10 km1742
Coast distance1 km1 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. New York leads by 32 points.32
New YorkSan Diego
Score9563
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6,032823
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3827
Museums & heritage. New York leads by 16 points.16
New YorkSan Diego
Score6044
Museums within 10 km11959
Museums within 2 km of centre3130
Share of museums within 2 km %2651
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. New York leads by 39 points.39
New YorkSan Diego
Score8950
Drinking venues within 4 km4,159615
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,015408
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4866
Nightclubs within 4 km19231
Nature & day trips. San Diego leads by 16 points.16
New YorkSan Diego
Score3955
Protected land share 50 km %46
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6952
Park area within 2 km134 hectares308 hectares
Good for families. San Diego leads by 3 points.3
New YorkSan Diego
Score7275
Tourist attractions within 2 km3740
Park area within 2 km134 hectares308 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km73
Sights concentration. New York leads by 34 points.34
New YorkSan Diego
Score7440
Notable places within 2 km26840
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. New York and San Diego are level on 43.
New YorkSan Diego
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 30 points.30
New YorkSan Diego
Score5888
Monthly daytime high4.5 °C to 30.1 °C18.6 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall74 mm to 112 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 York
5
6
10
16
22
27
30
29
25
19
13
7
San Diego
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
23
21
19
Sea temperature, °C
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Rainfall, mm
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Daylight, hours per day
New York
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
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 York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre). San Diego: 1991-2020 normals, San Diego International Airport (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromNew YorkSan Diego
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 5 m
€236-237
LGA · 13 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
BostonBOS, PSM
1 h 0 m
€193-222
JFK · 21 km
5 h 35 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
DenverDEN, APA
3 h 45 m
no fares
LGA · 13 km
2 h 15 m
€64-224
SAN · 3 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 20 m
€201-385
LGA · 13 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
1 h 5 m
€203-258
LGA · 13 km
4 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
RaleighRDU
1 h 30 m
€201-279
1 stop
LGA · 13 km
4 h 50 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
5 h 20 m
€314-354
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
50 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
TokyoHND, NRT
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 21 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
4 h 40 m
€374-446
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
TIJ · 26 km
MunichMUC
8 h 20 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
12 h 5 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 YorkSan Diego
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
Elevation25 m129 m
Main airportJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinationsSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureNew YorkSan Diego
City population8,804,1901,386,932
People per km²7,2561,438
Museums within 10 km15726
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre13244
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months1 month

Where else could you go?

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