VacationSelector

Paris or San Francisco?

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

Your match

Paris
✓ Best match
67
match

Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration with your weighting.

San Francisco
62
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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.

ParisSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 60 points.60
ParisSan Francisco
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km244
Coast distance149 km2 km
Water distance2 km
Places to eat. Paris leads by 7 points.7
ParisSan Francisco
Score9083
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4,7322,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3339
Museums & heritage. Paris leads by 32 points.32
ParisSan Francisco
Score7644
Museums within 10 km18557
Museums within 2 km of centre6529
Share of museums within 2 km %3551
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. Paris leads by 20 points.20
ParisSan Francisco
Score8868
Drinking venues within 4 km3,7961,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,694928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4565
Nightclubs within 4 km20197
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 12 points.12
ParisSan Francisco
Score4860
Protected land share 50 km %2817
Landscape blanket share 50 km %264
Land share of disc %10057
Park area within 2 km82 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. Paris leads by 18 points.18
ParisSan Francisco
Score7557
Tourist attractions within 2 km8948
Park area within 2 km82 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Paris leads by 31 points.31
ParisSan Francisco
Score9463
Notable places within 2 km865147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Paris leads by 19 points.19
ParisSan Francisco
Score6243
Price level global73.7100
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 12 points.12
ParisSan Francisco
Score6678
Monthly daytime high7.8 °C to 26 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall38 mm to 75 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months17
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
Paris
8
9
13
17
20
24
26
26
22
17
11
8
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Paris
No coastline within reach
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Paris
45
38
41
45
75
51
58
54
51
55
54
62
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Paris
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
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. Paris: 1991-2020 normals, Paris-Montsouris (4.6 km from centre). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromParisSan Francisco
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 30 m
€579-648
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 5 m
€705-999
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€63-103
CDG · 22 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 10 m
€509-719
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 18 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
9 h 0 m
€555-767
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€110-135
CDG · 22 km
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
11 h 0 m
no fares
CDG · 22 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 10 m
€122-134
CDG · 22 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 45 m
€445-510
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 50 m
€292-389
1 stop
CDG · 22 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

MeasureParisSan Francisco
Official languageFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation27 m16 m
Main airportCharles de Gaulle International Airport (CDG)22 km from centre277 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureParisSan Francisco
City population2,103,778873,965
People per km²19,9601,455
Museums within 10 km25150
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre169108
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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