VacationSelector

San Diego or Valletta?

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 good for families and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Valletta
60
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 DiegoValletta
Beaches & swimming. Valletta leads by 14 points.14
San DiegoValletta
Score6377
Swim season months16
Beaches 10 km4222
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. San Diego leads by 5 points.5
San DiegoValletta
Score6358
Restaurants within 2 km of centre823416
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2735
Museums & heritage. Valletta leads by 17 points.17
San DiegoValletta
Score4461
Museums within 10 km5946
Museums within 2 km of centre3029
Share of museums within 2 km %5163
Unesco sites within 50 km03
Nightlife. San Diego leads by 3 points.3
San DiegoValletta
Score5047
Drinking venues within 4 km615522
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre408250
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6648
Nightclubs within 4 km3127
Nature & day trips. San Diego leads by 9 points.9
San DiegoValletta
Score5546
Protected land share 50 km %6
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %526
Park area within 2 km308 hectares24 hectares
Good for families. San Diego leads by 29 points.29
San DiegoValletta
Score7546
Tourist attractions within 2 km4032
Park area within 2 km308 hectares24 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Valletta leads by 21 points.21
San DiegoValletta
Score4061
Notable places within 2 km40133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Valletta leads by 26 points.26
San DiegoValletta
Score4369
Price level global10062.8
Daily budget€129
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 9 points.9
San DiegoValletta
Score8879
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 25 °C15.7 °C to 31.9 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 56 mm0 mm to 90 mm
Dry months96
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
Valletta
16
16
17
20
24
29
32
32
29
25
21
17
Sea temperature, °C
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Valletta
16
15
15
16
19
22
25
27
26
24
21
18
Rainfall, mm
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Valletta
80
72
39
19
10
5
0
10
63
74
90
85
Daylight, hours per day
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Valletta
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
San Diego
No sunshine record
Valletta
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
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). Valletta: 1991-2020 normals, Luqa (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan DiegoValletta
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 0 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
3 h 10 m
€91-131
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
9 h 20 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
MunichMUC
12 h 5 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
2 h 20 m
€165-259
MLA · 6 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
3 h 0 m
€205-271
1 stop
MLA · 6 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 DiegoValletta
Official languageEnglish, Maltese
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation129 m56 m
Main airportSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinationsMalta International Airport (MLA)6 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan DiegoValletta
City population1,386,9326,444
People per km²1,4388,055
Museums within 10 km2615
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km03
Distinct cuisines in the centre4455
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 Valletta 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.