VacationSelector

Nice or San Diego?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Nice
56
match

Wins on value for money and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

San Diego
58
match

Wins on good for families 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.

NiceSan Diego
Beaches & swimming. Nice leads by 10 points.10
NiceSan Diego
Score7363
Swim season months41
Beaches 10 km7042
Coast distance1 km1 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. Nice leads by 6 points.6
NiceSan Diego
Score6963
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,231823
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2827
Museums & heritage. Nice leads by 2 points.2
NiceSan Diego
Score4644
Museums within 10 km2759
Museums within 2 km of centre1430
Share of museums within 2 km %5251
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. San Diego leads by 6 points.6
NiceSan Diego
Score4450
Drinking venues within 4 km428615
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre388408
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %9166
Nightclubs within 4 km2631
Nature & day trips. Nice leads by 2 points.2
NiceSan Diego
Score5755
Protected land share 50 km %246
Landscape blanket share 50 km %200
Land share of disc %6252
Park area within 2 km56 hectares308 hectares
Good for families. San Diego leads by 45 points.45
NiceSan Diego
Score3075
Tourist attractions within 2 km440
Park area within 2 km56 hectares308 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km33
Sights concentration. Nice leads by 7 points.7
NiceSan Diego
Score4740
Notable places within 2 km6040
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Nice leads by 19 points.19
NiceSan Diego
Score6243
Price level global73.7100
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 14 points.14
NiceSan Diego
Score7488
Monthly daytime high13.3 °C to 27.9 °C18.6 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall13 mm to 138 mm0 mm to 56 mm
Dry months39
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
Nice
13
14
15
17
21
25
28
28
25
21
17
14
San Diego
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
23
21
19
Sea temperature, °C
Nice
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
22
20
17
15
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Nice
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Daylight, hours per day
Nice
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Nice
5
6
7
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
5
5
San Diego
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Nice: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (8 km from centre). San Diego: 1991-2020 normals, San Diego International Airport (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromNiceSan Diego
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 6 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€666-799
1 stop
NCE · 6 km
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
€170-248
NCE · 6 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
BostonBOS, PSM
7 h 50 m
no fares
NCE · 6 km
5 h 35 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
MunichMUC
1 h 25 m
€198-243
1 stop
NCE · 6 km
12 h 5 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
8 h 40 m
no fares
NCE · 6 km
4 h 55 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

MeasureNiceSan Diego
Official languageFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation0 m129 m
Main airportNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)6 km from centre129 non-stop destinationsSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureNiceSan Diego
City population357,7371,386,932
People per km²4,9751,438
Museums within 10 km1626
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre6544
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Nice 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.