VacationSelector

Paphos or San Jose?

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

Your match

Paphos
✓ Best match
46
match

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

San Jose
39
match

Wins on nature & day trips and museums & heritage 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.

PaphosSan Jose
Beaches & swimming. Paphos leads by 71 points.71
PaphosSan Jose
Score798
Swim season months60
Beaches 10 km271
Coast distance1 km14 km
Water distance1 km14 km
Places to eat. Paphos leads by 3 points.3
PaphosSan Jose
Score4441
Restaurants within 2 km of centre251313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2216
Museums & heritage. San Jose leads by 4 points.4
PaphosSan Jose
Score2226
Museums within 10 km820
Museums within 2 km of centre39
Share of museums within 2 km %3845
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. San Jose leads by 1 points.1
PaphosSan Jose
Score3031
Drinking venues within 4 km224231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre16188
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7238
Nightclubs within 4 km1116
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 47 points.47
PaphosSan Jose
Score2370
Protected land share 50 km %226
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %3391
Park area within 2 km27 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. Paphos leads by 9 points.9
PaphosSan Jose
Score4233
Tourist attractions within 2 km302
Park area within 2 km27 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Paphos leads by 5 points.5
PaphosSan Jose
Score1914
Notable places within 2 km129
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Paphos leads by 27 points.27
PaphosSan Jose
Score7043
Price level global61.4100
Daily budget€129
Year-round weather. Paphos leads by 1 points.1
PaphosSan Jose
Score8685
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 30.8 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 98 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months88
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
Paphos
17
17
19
21
25
28
30
31
29
27
23
19
San Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Paphos
17
17
17
18
21
24
27
28
27
25
22
19
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Paphos
81
47
29
17
10
2
1
0
5
14
42
98
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Paphos
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
San Jose
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. Paphos: 1991-2020 normals, Paphos Airport (8.4 km from centre). San Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromPaphosSan Jose
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
4 h 25 m
€125-167
PFO · 8 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
4 h 5 m
€197-331
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
3 h 45 m
no fares
LCA · 110 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
3 h 10 m
€123-135
PFO · 8 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
AmsterdamAMS
4 h 5 m
€253-340
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
3 h 25 m
no fares
LCA · 110 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
DublinDUB
5 h 0 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 55 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
12 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 57 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 2026-09 to 2026-09, 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

MeasurePaphosSan Jose
Official languageTurkish, Greek, Modern Greek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsG240 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation72 m25 m
Main airportPaphos International Airport (PFO)8 km from centre57 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year17 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasurePaphosSan Jose
City population35,9611,013,240
People per km²1,9872,167
Museums within 10 km419
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre3630
Swim season, months above 21 °C6 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Paphos or San Jose 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.