VacationSelector

San Diego or Sao Paulo?

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, 2 points apart

San Diego
58
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Sao Paulo
56
match

Wins on value for money 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.

San DiegoSao Paulo
Beaches & swimming. San Diego leads by 63 points.63
San DiegoSao Paulo
Score630
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km420
Coast distance1 km51 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Sao Paulo leads by 10 points.10
San DiegoSao Paulo
Score6373
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8231,735
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2727
Museums & heritage. San Diego leads by 1 points.1
San DiegoSao Paulo
Score4443
Museums within 10 km5982
Museums within 2 km of centre3026
Share of museums within 2 km %5132
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Sao Paulo leads by 22 points.22
San DiegoSao Paulo
Score5072
Drinking venues within 4 km6151,747
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre408896
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6651
Nightclubs within 4 km31118
Nature & day trips. San Diego leads by 4 points.4
San DiegoSao Paulo
Score5551
Protected land share 50 km %626
Landscape blanket share 50 km %015
Land share of disc %5295
Park area within 2 km308 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. San Diego leads by 20 points.20
San DiegoSao Paulo
Score7555
Tourist attractions within 2 km4038
Park area within 2 km308 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Sao Paulo leads by 10 points.10
San DiegoSao Paulo
Score4050
Notable places within 2 km4068
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sao Paulo leads by 38 points.38
San DiegoSao Paulo
Score4381
Price level global10046.1
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 5 points.5
San DiegoSao Paulo
Score8883
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 25 °C22.8 °C to 29.2 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 56 mm26 mm to 297 mm
Dry months91
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
Sao Paulo
28
29
28
27
24
23
23
25
25
27
27
28
Sea temperature, °C
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Sao Paulo
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Sao Paulo
297
259
206
89
64
55
53
26
82
128
146
234
Daylight, hours per day
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sao Paulo
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Sunshine, hours per day
San Diego
No sunshine record
Sao Paulo
4
6
6
5
5
5
6
6
5
6
5
5

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). Sao Paulo: 1991-2020 normals, Sao Paulo (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan DiegoSao Paulo
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
9 h 40 m
€576-611
GRU · 21 km
BostonBOS, PSM
5 h 35 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
10 h 35 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
4 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
50 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
12 h 20 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
3 h 10 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
4 h 45 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
8 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
MunichMUC
12 h 5 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
12 h 15 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
12 h 10 m
no fares
GRU · 21 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 DiegoSao Paulo
Official languagePortuguese
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Brazilian Real (BRL)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCN60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC-3
Emergency number911Police 190, ambulance 192, fire 193
Elevation129 m760 m
Main airportSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinationsSão Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU)21 km from centre102 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan DiegoSao Paulo
City population1,386,93211,451,999
People per km²1,4387,519
Museums within 10 km2690
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre4459
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month

Where else could you go?

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