VacationSelector

Nice or San Sebastian?

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

Your match

Nice
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on value for money 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.

NiceSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. Nice leads by 18 points.18
NiceSan Sebastian
Score7355
Swim season months42
Beaches 10 km7010
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Nice leads by 14 points.14
NiceSan Sebastian
Score6955
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,231472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2826
Museums & heritage. Nice leads by 7 points.7
NiceSan Sebastian
Score4639
Museums within 10 km2717
Museums within 2 km of centre147
Share of museums within 2 km %5241
Unesco sites within 50 km23
Nightlife. Nice leads by 4 points.4
NiceSan Sebastian
Score4440
Drinking venues within 4 km428388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre388338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %9187
Nightclubs within 4 km2612
Nature & day trips. Nice leads by 1 points.1
NiceSan Sebastian
Score5756
Protected land share 50 km %2411
Landscape blanket share 50 km %200
Land share of disc %6252
Park area within 2 km56 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Nice and San Sebastian are level on 30.
NiceSan Sebastian
Score3030
Tourist attractions within 2 km45
Park area within 2 km56 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 7 points.7
NiceSan Sebastian
Score4754
Notable places within 2 km6089
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 9 points.9
NiceSan Sebastian
Score6271
Price level global73.760.8
Daily budget€160€122
Year-round weather. Nice leads by 16 points.16
NiceSan Sebastian
Score7458
Monthly daytime high13.3 °C to 27.9 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall13 mm to 138 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months30
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 Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Nice
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
22
20
17
15
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Nice
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Nice
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Nice
5
6
7
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
5
5
San Sebastian
3
4
5
5
7
6
7
6
6
5
3
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Nice: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (8 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromNiceSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 6 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 6 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
€170-248
NCE · 6 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
MunichMUC
1 h 25 m
€198-243
1 stop
NCE · 6 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 30 m
€164-246
1 stop
NCE · 6 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 20 m
no fares
NCE · 6 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
1 h 50 m
€137-165
NCE · 6 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€83-135
NCE · 6 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 55 m
no fares
NCE · 6 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€666-799
1 stop
NCE · 6 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 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 Sebastian
Official languageFrenchSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m6 m
Main airportNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)6 km from centre129 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureNiceSan Sebastian
City population357,737189,866
People per km²4,9753,118
Museums within 10 km1614
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km23
Distinct cuisines in the centre6545
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Nice or San Sebastian 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. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.