VacationSelector

San Diego or Sydney?

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

Your match

San Diego
58
match

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

Sydney
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on nightlife 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 DiegoSydney
Beaches & swimming. San Diego leads by 3 points.3
San DiegoSydney
Score6360
Swim season months16
Beaches 10 km42160
Coast distance1 km7 km
Water distance1 km7 km
Places to eat. Sydney leads by 15 points.15
San DiegoSydney
Score6378
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8232,205
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2731
Museums & heritage. Sydney leads by 7 points.7
San DiegoSydney
Score4451
Museums within 10 km5944
Museums within 2 km of centre3020
Share of museums within 2 km %5145
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. Sydney leads by 25 points.25
San DiegoSydney
Score5075
Drinking venues within 4 km6152,050
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre4081,405
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6669
Nightclubs within 4 km31120
Nature & day trips. Sydney leads by 3 points.3
San DiegoSydney
Score5558
Protected land share 50 km %610
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5252
Park area within 2 km308 hectares115 hectares
Good for families. San Diego leads by 11 points.11
San DiegoSydney
Score7564
Tourist attractions within 2 km4037
Park area within 2 km308 hectares115 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Sydney leads by 20 points.20
San DiegoSydney
Score4060
Notable places within 2 km40123
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sydney leads by 7 points.7
San DiegoSydney
Score4350
Price level global10090.2
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 7 points.7
San DiegoSydney
Score8881
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 25 °C17.7 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 56 mm55 mm to 121 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
Sydney
28
27
26
23
21
18
18
19
22
24
25
26
Sea temperature, °C
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Sydney
23
23
23
22
21
20
19
18
18
19
20
21
Rainfall, mm
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Sydney
80
116
90
95
89
121
70
63
57
55
71
68
Daylight, hours per day
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sydney
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Sunshine, hours per day
San Diego
No sunshine record
Sydney
8
6
7
7
7
6
7
8
8
8
7
8

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). Sydney: 1991-2020 normals, Sydney Airport (3.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan DiegoSydney
San FranciscoSFO
1 h 30 m
€121-158
SAN · 3 km
14 h 45 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
50 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
14 h 50 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
19 h 30 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
HonoluluHNL
5 h 35 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
10 h 15 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
16 h 55 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
2 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
15 h 20 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
9 h 50 m
€671
SYD · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 0 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
20 h 40 m
€931-1073
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
3 h 10 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
16 h 55 m
no fares
SYD · 9 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

MeasureSan DiegoSydney
Official languageEnglish
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Australian Dollar (AUD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzI230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+10, UTC+11 in summer
Emergency number911000
Elevation129 m6 m
Main airportSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinationsSydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (SYD)9 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan DiegoSydney
City population1,386,9325,450,496
People per km²1,438449
Museums within 10 km2638
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre4479
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month6 months

Where else could you go?

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