VacationSelector

Nice or San Francisco?

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

Your match

Nice
56
match

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

San Francisco
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on good for families and nightlife 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 Francisco
Beaches & swimming. Nice leads by 13 points.13
NiceSan Francisco
Score7360
Swim season months40
Beaches 10 km7044
Coast distance1 km2 km
Water distance1 km2 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 14 points.14
NiceSan Francisco
Score6983
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,2312,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2839
Museums & heritage. Nice leads by 2 points.2
NiceSan Francisco
Score4644
Museums within 10 km2757
Museums within 2 km of centre1429
Share of museums within 2 km %5251
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 24 points.24
NiceSan Francisco
Score4468
Drinking venues within 4 km4281,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre388928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %9165
Nightclubs within 4 km2697
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 3 points.3
NiceSan Francisco
Score5760
Protected land share 50 km %2417
Landscape blanket share 50 km %204
Land share of disc %6257
Park area within 2 km56 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 27 points.27
NiceSan Francisco
Score3057
Tourist attractions within 2 km448
Park area within 2 km56 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 16 points.16
NiceSan Francisco
Score4763
Notable places within 2 km60147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Nice leads by 19 points.19
NiceSan Francisco
Score6243
Price level global73.7100
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 4 points.4
NiceSan Francisco
Score7478
Monthly daytime high13.3 °C to 27.9 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall13 mm to 138 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months37
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 Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Nice
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
22
20
17
15
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Nice
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Nice
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Nice
5
6
7
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
5
5
San Francisco
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 Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromNiceSan Francisco
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 6 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 6 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€666-799
1 stop
NCE · 6 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€83-135
NCE · 6 km
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 30 m
€164-246
1 stop
NCE · 6 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
MunichMUC
1 h 25 m
€198-243
1 stop
NCE · 6 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 10 m
€69-133
NCE · 6 km
12 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
€170-248
NCE · 6 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 20 m
€375-433
NCE · 6 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
9 h 40 m
no fares
NCE · 6 km
4 h 40 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

MeasureNiceSan Francisco
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 m16 m
Main airportNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)6 km from centre129 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureNiceSan Francisco
City population357,737873,965
People per km²4,9751,455
Museums within 10 km1650
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre65108
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Nice 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). 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.