VacationSelector

Rio de Janeiro or San Francisco?

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

Your match

Rio de Janeiro
✓ Best match
69
match

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

San Francisco
62
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife 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.

Rio de JaneiroSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. Rio de Janeiro leads by 40 points.40
Rio de JaneiroSan Francisco
Score10060
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km6144
Coast distance1 km2 km
Water distance1 km2 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 29 points.29
Rio de JaneiroSan Francisco
Score5483
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8042,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1639
Museums & heritage. Rio de Janeiro leads by 25 points.25
Rio de JaneiroSan Francisco
Score6944
Museums within 10 km11057
Museums within 2 km of centre5129
Share of museums within 2 km %4651
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 11 points.11
Rio de JaneiroSan Francisco
Score5768
Drinking venues within 4 km8181,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre509928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6265
Nightclubs within 4 km5097
Nature & day trips. Rio de Janeiro leads by 2 points.2
Rio de JaneiroSan Francisco
Score6260
Protected land share 50 km %2117
Landscape blanket share 50 km %174
Land share of disc %5757
Park area within 2 km113 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. Rio de Janeiro leads by 2 points.2
Rio de JaneiroSan Francisco
Score5957
Tourist attractions within 2 km3048
Park area within 2 km113 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 7 points.7
Rio de JaneiroSan Francisco
Score5663
Notable places within 2 km98147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rio de Janeiro leads by 38 points.38
Rio de JaneiroSan Francisco
Score8143
Price level global46.1100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Rio de Janeiro leads by 7 points.7
Rio de JaneiroSan Francisco
Score8578
Monthly daytime high24 °C to 28.4 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 232 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
Rio de Janeiro
28
28
28
27
25
24
24
25
25
26
26
27
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Rio de Janeiro
25
25
25
25
24
23
22
21
21
22
23
24
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Rio de Janeiro
208
151
173
101
71
49
45
42
69
108
220
232
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Rio de Janeiro
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
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. Rio de Janeiro: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km. San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRio de JaneiroSan Francisco
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
9 h 45 m
€609-699
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
10 h 25 m
no fares
GIG · 12 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
10 h 35 m
no fares
GIG · 12 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 55 m
€915-1205
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 30 m
€957-1014
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 35 m
€996-1109
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
9 h 40 m
no fares
GIG · 12 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 40 m
€1,154-1306
GIG · 12 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
MadridMAD
10 h 15 m
€910-925
1 stop
GIG · 12 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 55 m
€900-974
1 stop
GIG · 12 km
11 h 0 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 2026-09 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

MeasureRio de JaneiroSan Francisco
Official languagePortuguese
CurrencyBrazilian Real (BRL)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCN60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-3UTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 190, ambulance 192, fire 193911
Elevation31 m16 m
Main airportRio de Janeiro Galeão – Tom Jobim International Airport (GIG)12 km from centre59 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureRio de JaneiroSan Francisco
City population6,211,223873,965
People per km²4,9301,455
Museums within 10 km7050
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre27108
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Rio de Janeiro 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). Temperature and rainfall for destinations with no weather station are from the NASA POWER 2001-2020 climatology, derived from MERRA-2. 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). 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. 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.