VacationSelector

Philadelphia or San Sebastian?

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

Your match

Too close to call, level with your weighting

Philadelphia
51
match

Wins on good for families and places to eat with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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.

PhiladelphiaSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 55 points.55
PhiladelphiaSan Sebastian
Score055
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km110
Coast distance13 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Philadelphia leads by 22 points.22
PhiladelphiaSan Sebastian
Score7755
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,714472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3526
Museums & heritage. Philadelphia leads by 21 points.21
PhiladelphiaSan Sebastian
Score6039
Museums within 10 km8917
Museums within 2 km of centre487
Share of museums within 2 km %5441
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Philadelphia leads by 19 points.19
PhiladelphiaSan Sebastian
Score5940
Drinking venues within 4 km930388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre575338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6287
Nightclubs within 4 km4112
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 7 points.7
PhiladelphiaSan Sebastian
Score4956
Protected land share 50 km %1411
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8952
Park area within 2 km75 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Philadelphia leads by 23 points.23
PhiladelphiaSan Sebastian
Score5330
Tourist attractions within 2 km165
Park area within 2 km75 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Philadelphia and San Sebastian are level on 54.
PhiladelphiaSan Sebastian
Score5454
Notable places within 2 km8889
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 28 points.28
PhiladelphiaSan Sebastian
Score4371
Price level global10060.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Philadelphia leads by 2 points.2
PhiladelphiaSan Sebastian
Score6058
Monthly daytime high5.2 °C to 31 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall69 mm to 112 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months00
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
Philadelphia
5
7
12
18
24
28
31
30
26
20
13
8
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Philadelphia
No coastline within reach
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Philadelphia
79
69
101
88
86
103
111
109
112
88
74
101
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Philadelphia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Philadelphia
4
5
6
7
9
9
8
9
7
7
5
5
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. Philadelphia: 1991-2020 normals, Philadelphia International Airport (11.3 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromPhiladelphiaSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 40 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
PalmaPMI
8 h 5 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
AmsterdamAMS
7 h 45 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
MunichMUC
8 h 20 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
8 h 5 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
7 h 35 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 20 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
BarcelonaBCN
8 h 5 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
DublinDUB
6 h 50 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIQ · 40 km
MarrakechRAK
7 h 35 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
2 h 15 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

MeasurePhiladelphiaSan Sebastian
Official languageSpanish
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation12 m6 m
Main airportPhiladelphia International Airport (PHL)11 km from centre128 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasurePhiladelphiaSan Sebastian
City population1,603,797189,866
People per km²4,3393,118
Museums within 10 km5414
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre7545
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Philadelphia 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. 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.