VacationSelector

Rome or San Sebastian?

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

Your match

Rome
✓ Best match
72
match

Wins on good for families and museums & heritage 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.

RomeSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 22 points.22
RomeSan Sebastian
Score3355
Swim season months52
Beaches 10 km310
Coast distance24 km0 km
Water distance24 km0 km
Places to eat. Rome leads by 5 points.5
RomeSan Sebastian
Score6055
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,241472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1026
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 45 points.45
RomeSan Sebastian
Score8439
Museums within 10 km16117
Museums within 2 km of centre797
Share of museums within 2 km %4941
Unesco sites within 50 km73
Nightlife. Rome leads by 34 points.34
RomeSan Sebastian
Score7440
Drinking venues within 4 km2,022388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre912338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4587
Nightclubs within 4 km8512
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 14 points.14
RomeSan Sebastian
Score7056
Protected land share 50 km %1911
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7852
Park area within 2 km172 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 56 points.56
RomeSan Sebastian
Score8630
Tourist attractions within 2 km1265
Park area within 2 km172 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 45 points.45
RomeSan Sebastian
Score9954
Notable places within 2 km1,12589
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 3 points.3
RomeSan Sebastian
Score6871
Price level global64.960.8
Daily budget€155€122
Year-round weather. Rome leads by 13 points.13
RomeSan Sebastian
Score7158
Monthly daytime high12 °C to 31.4 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall21 mm to 114 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months30
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
Rome
12
13
16
18
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Rome
10
11
12
13
15
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
Rome
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
4
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. Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRomeSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-119
FCO · 23 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 10 m
€176-218
FCO · 23 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
MunichMUC
1 h 30 m
€145-191
FCO · 23 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 20 m
€76-143
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€44-74
FCO · 23 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 50 m
€96-147
FCO · 23 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 40 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 45 m
€446-597
FCO · 23 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 10 m
no fares
CIA · 14 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

MeasureRomeSan 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
Elevation21 m6 m
Main airportRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureRomeSan Sebastian
City population2,748,109189,866
People per km²2,1353,118
Museums within 10 km17714
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km73
Distinct cuisines in the centre6545
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 Rome 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.