VacationSelector

Ottawa or San Francisco?

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

Your match

Ottawa
43
match

Wins on value for money with your weighting.

San Francisco
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

OttawaSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 60 points.60
OttawaSan Francisco
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km944
Coast distance423 km2 km
Water distance2 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 19 points.19
OttawaSan Francisco
Score6483
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6842,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3439
Museums & heritage. San Francisco leads by 12 points.12
OttawaSan Francisco
Score3244
Museums within 10 km1557
Museums within 2 km of centre829
Share of museums within 2 km %5351
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 24 points.24
OttawaSan Francisco
Score4468
Drinking venues within 4 km4321,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre303928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7065
Nightclubs within 4 km3597
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 19 points.19
OttawaSan Francisco
Score4160
Protected land share 50 km %817
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %10057
Park area within 2 km122 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 11 points.11
OttawaSan Francisco
Score4657
Tourist attractions within 2 km1148
Park area within 2 km122 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 13 points.13
OttawaSan Francisco
Score5063
Notable places within 2 km71147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Ottawa leads by 11 points.11
OttawaSan Francisco
Score5443
Price level global84100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 25 points.25
OttawaSan Francisco
Score5378
Monthly daytime high-4.9 °C to 27 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 94 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
Ottawa
-5
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
14
6
-2
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Ottawa
No coastline within reach
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Ottawa
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Francisco
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. Ottawa: 1991-2020 normals, Ottawa CDA RCS (5.3 km from centre). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromOttawaSan Francisco
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
4 h 50 m
€175-263
2 stops
YOW · 12 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
4 h 35 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
50 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
5 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
CancunCUN
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
1 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
4 h 10 m
€196-293
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
CalgaryYYC
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
11 h 15 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

MeasureOttawaSan Francisco
Official languageFrench, English
CurrencyCanadian Dollar (CAD)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
Elevation70 m16 m
Main airportOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureOttawaSan Francisco
City population1,017,449873,965
People per km²3661,455
Museums within 10 km2050
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre62108
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Ottawa 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. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.