VacationSelector

Palermo or San Sebastian?

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

Your match

Palermo
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on year-round weather and nightlife with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on nature & day trips and places to eat 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.

PalermoSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. Palermo leads by 12 points.12
PalermoSan Sebastian
Score6755
Swim season months52
Beaches 10 km1310
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. San Sebastian leads by 5 points.5
PalermoSan Sebastian
Score5055
Restaurants within 2 km of centre807472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1326
Museums & heritage. Palermo leads by 11 points.11
PalermoSan Sebastian
Score5039
Museums within 10 km3217
Museums within 2 km of centre267
Share of museums within 2 km %8141
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Palermo leads by 13 points.13
PalermoSan Sebastian
Score5340
Drinking venues within 4 km799388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre515338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6487
Nightclubs within 4 km1612
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 20 points.20
PalermoSan Sebastian
Score3656
Protected land share 50 km %411
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4552
Park area within 2 km63 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Palermo leads by 11 points.11
PalermoSan Sebastian
Score4130
Tourist attractions within 2 km165
Park area within 2 km63 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Palermo leads by 3 points.3
PalermoSan Sebastian
Score5754
Notable places within 2 km10489
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 3 points.3
PalermoSan Sebastian
Score6871
Price level global64.960.8
Daily budget€155€122
Year-round weather. Palermo leads by 19 points.19
PalermoSan Sebastian
Score7758
Monthly daytime high12.6 °C to 27.8 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall4 mm to 71 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months70
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
Palermo
13
13
14
16
20
24
28
28
25
21
17
14
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Palermo
15
14
15
16
19
22
26
27
25
23
20
17
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Palermo
48
45
35
35
18
9
4
11
37
67
71
69
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Palermo
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Palermo
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
8
7
5
4
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. Palermo: 1961-1990 normals, Ustica (66.8 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromPalermoSan Sebastian
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 45 m
€31-110
PMO · 25 km
1 h 50 m
€79-101
BIO · 75 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 10 m
€40-52
PMO · 25 km
2 h 10 m
€77-99
BIO · 75 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€101-135
PMO · 25 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
MunichMUC
2 h 0 m
€175-215
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 15 m
€101-154
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 45 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 40 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€92-140
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
9 h 5 m
no fares
PMO · 25 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

MeasurePalermoSan Sebastian
Official languageItalianSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation14 m6 m
Main airportFalcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasurePalermoSan Sebastian
City population630,167189,866
People per km²3,9243,118
Museums within 10 km4214
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre3345
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months2 months

Where else could you go?

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