VacationSelector

San Diego or San Sebastian?

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

Your match

San Diego
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on good for families and year-round weather with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on value for money and sights concentration 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.

San DiegoSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Diego leads by 8 points.8
San DiegoSan Sebastian
Score6355
Swim season months12
Beaches 10 km4210
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. San Diego leads by 8 points.8
San DiegoSan Sebastian
Score6355
Restaurants within 2 km of centre823472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2726
Museums & heritage. San Diego leads by 5 points.5
San DiegoSan Sebastian
Score4439
Museums within 10 km5917
Museums within 2 km of centre307
Share of museums within 2 km %5141
Unesco sites within 50 km03
Nightlife. San Diego leads by 10 points.10
San DiegoSan Sebastian
Score5040
Drinking venues within 4 km615388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre408338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6687
Nightclubs within 4 km3112
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 1 points.1
San DiegoSan Sebastian
Score5556
Protected land share 50 km %611
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5252
Park area within 2 km308 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. San Diego leads by 45 points.45
San DiegoSan Sebastian
Score7530
Tourist attractions within 2 km405
Park area within 2 km308 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 14 points.14
San DiegoSan Sebastian
Score4054
Notable places within 2 km4089
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 28 points.28
San DiegoSan Sebastian
Score4371
Price level global10060.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 30 points.30
San DiegoSan Sebastian
Score8858
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 25 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 56 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months90
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
San Diego
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
23
21
19
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
San Diego
No sunshine record
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. San Diego: 1991-2020 normals, San Diego International Airport (2.8 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan DiegoSan Sebastian
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
MunichMUC
12 h 5 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 0 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 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

MeasureSan DiegoSan Sebastian
Official languageSpanish
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation129 m6 m
Main airportSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan DiegoSan Sebastian
City population1,386,932189,866
People per km²1,4383,118
Museums within 10 km2614
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km03
Distinct cuisines in the centre4445
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow San Diego 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). 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. 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.