VacationSelector

Osaka or San Francisco?

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

Your match

Osaka
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on nightlife and value for money with your weighting.

San Francisco
62
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

OsakaSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 5 points.5
OsakaSan Francisco
Score5560
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km2544
Coast distance7 km2 km
Water distance7 km2 km
Places to eat. Osaka leads by 7 points.7
OsakaSan Francisco
Score9083
Restaurants within 2 km of centre9,1342,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2539
Museums & heritage. Osaka leads by 20 points.20
OsakaSan Francisco
Score6444
Museums within 10 km7857
Museums within 2 km of centre2229
Share of museums within 2 km %2851
Unesco sites within 50 km60
Nightlife. Osaka leads by 29 points.29
OsakaSan Francisco
Score9768
Drinking venues within 4 km8,4731,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre4,492928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5365
Nightclubs within 4 km9797
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 32 points.32
OsakaSan Francisco
Score2860
Protected land share 50 km %117
Landscape blanket share 50 km %14
Land share of disc %8457
Park area within 2 km88 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. Osaka leads by 15 points.15
OsakaSan Francisco
Score7257
Tourist attractions within 2 km4748
Park area within 2 km88 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km71
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 15 points.15
OsakaSan Francisco
Score4863
Notable places within 2 km63147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Osaka leads by 27 points.27
OsakaSan Francisco
Score7043
Price level global62.4100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 15 points.15
OsakaSan Francisco
Score6378
Monthly daytime high9.7 °C to 33.6 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 185 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months07
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
Osaka
10
11
14
20
25
28
32
34
30
24
18
12
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Osaka
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Osaka
47
61
103
103
136
185
175
113
146
140
73
56
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Osaka
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Osaka
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5
San Francisco
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Osaka: 1991-2020 normals, Osaka (1.8 km from centre). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromOsakaSan Francisco
SeoulICN, GMP
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 38 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 18 km
TokyoHND, NRT
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 11 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
2 h 10 m
€237-303
KIX · 38 km
12 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 38 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
HonoluluHNL
8 h 25 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
OAK · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 30 m
€1,507-1966
2 stops
ITM · 11 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
10 h 0 m
no fares
KIX · 38 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
9 h 35 m
no fares
KIX · 38 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
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

MeasureOsakaSan Francisco
Official languageJapanese
CurrencyYen (JPY)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the regionAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+9UTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, fire 119911
Elevation20 m16 m
Main airportKansai International Airport (KIX)38 km from centre62 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureOsakaSan Francisco
City population2,751,862873,965
People per km²12,3401,455
Museums within 10 km4350
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km60
Distinct cuisines in the centre97108
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

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