VacationSelector

New York or San Jose?

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 sights concentration and nightlife with your weighting.

San Jose
39
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather 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 Jose
Beaches & swimming. New York leads by 56 points.56
New YorkSan Jose
Score648
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km171
Coast distance1 km14 km
Water distance1 km14 km
Places to eat. New York leads by 54 points.54
New YorkSan Jose
Score9541
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6,032313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3816
Museums & heritage. New York leads by 34 points.34
New YorkSan Jose
Score6026
Museums within 10 km11920
Museums within 2 km of centre319
Share of museums within 2 km %2645
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. New York leads by 58 points.58
New YorkSan Jose
Score8931
Drinking venues within 4 km4,159231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,01588
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4838
Nightclubs within 4 km19216
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 31 points.31
New YorkSan Jose
Score3970
Protected land share 50 km %426
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %6991
Park area within 2 km134 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. New York leads by 39 points.39
New YorkSan Jose
Score7233
Tourist attractions within 2 km372
Park area within 2 km134 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km72
Sights concentration. New York leads by 60 points.60
New YorkSan Jose
Score7414
Notable places within 2 km2689
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. New York and San Jose are level on 43.
New YorkSan Jose
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 27 points.27
New YorkSan Jose
Score5885
Monthly daytime high4.5 °C to 30.1 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall74 mm to 112 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months08
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 Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
New York
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Jose
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 York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre). San Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromNew YorkSan Jose
TokyoHND, NRT
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 21 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 20 m
€201-385
LGA · 13 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
1 h 5 m
€203-258
LGA · 13 km
5 h 15 m
€252-262
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
BostonBOS, PSM
1 h 0 m
€193-222
JFK · 21 km
5 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 20 m
€206-234
LGA · 13 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 30 m
€445-517
JFK · 21 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€459-498
JFK · 21 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
5 h 20 m
€314-354
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
SJC · 8 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
4 h 40 m
€374-446
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
OAK · 56 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
13 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 57 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 Jose
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 m25 m
Main airportJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureNew YorkSan Jose
City population8,804,1901,013,240
People per km²7,2562,167
Museums within 10 km15719
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre13230
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

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