VacationSelector

San Francisco or Portland?

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

Your match

San Francisco
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

Portland
42
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Portland if you want a proper warm summer: July and August reach 27-28°C with very little rain, and the eating and drinking hold up well without the scale of a larger city.

Choose San Francisco if you want more within walking range of the centre, more museums and attractions, coast and protected land close by, and mild daytime temperatures from spring through to late autumn.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

San FranciscoPortland
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 60 points.60
San FranciscoPortland
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km4427
Coast distance2 km69 km
Water distance2 km—
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 9 points.9
San FranciscoPortland
Score8374
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,3591,011
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3944
Museums & heritage. San Francisco leads by 9 points.9
San FranciscoPortland
Score4435
Museums within 10 km5723
Museums within 2 km of centre2915
Share of museums within 2 km %5165
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 10 points.10
San FranciscoPortland
Score6858
Drinking venues within 4 km1,434942
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre928518
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6555
Nightclubs within 4 km9732
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 25 points.25
San FranciscoPortland
Score6035
Protected land share 50 km %1713
Landscape blanket share 50 km %43
Land share of disc %57100
Park area within 2 km45 hectares37 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 23 points.23
San FranciscoPortland
Score5734
Tourist attractions within 2 km488
Park area within 2 km45 hectares37 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 28 points.28
San FranciscoPortland
Score6335
Notable places within 2 km14729
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Francisco and Portland are level on 43.
San FranciscoPortland
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 13 points.13
San FranciscoPortland
Score7865
Monthly daytime high14 °C to 23.2 °C7.9 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 105 mm13 mm to 145 mm
Dry months73
0255075100

Where they differ

Portland's advantage is heat and a family day out: summer highs reach 28°C against San Francisco's 23°C, and there are 2 theme parks within reach against 1. Its museums, though fewer, sit tightly around the centre.

San Francisco has many times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, and many more attractions near it. Nature is closer too: 17% of the surrounding land is protected against 13% around Portland, with 44 beaches nearby against 27.

Where they are alike

Eating out is what both do best. San Francisco has about twice as many restaurants near the centre, but the range of kitchens is much the same, so varied meals are easy in either.

Museums and nights out follow that pattern: San Francisco has more of both, yet neither has a UNESCO-listed place within day-trip reach, and both keep a good part of their drinking and clubbing close to the centre.

Which traveller are you?

Someone travelling to eat and drink: San Francisco, with about twice as many restaurants near the centre and roughly three times as many nightclubs, most of them within reach of wherever you stay.

A family with children: San Francisco for the density of attractions and the park space near the centre, unless theme parks are the point, in which case Portland has 2 within reach against 1.

A walker who wants heat: Portland in July and August, at 27-28°C with little rain. For coast and protected land across more of the year, San Francisco, though its sea peaks at 14°C.

What the numbers don't tell you

No cost comparison is possible here. The value figure both cities carry is a national price level, identical for the two by construction, and the data holds no daily budget for either, so nothing in it tells you which trip costs more. Judge that from your own quotes for flights, rooms and meals.

The weather picture is also incomplete: no nearby station reports sunshine hours, so that side is unmeasured rather than poor. And a beach count is not a swimming season. San Francisco's 44 beaches sit beside a sea that peaks at 14°C, which is walking weather, not bathing weather.

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 Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Portland
8
11
13
16
20
23
27
28
25
18
12
8
Sea temperature, °C
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Portland
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Portland
128
94
101
75
65
41
13
14
39
87
138
145
Daylight, hours per day
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Portland
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre). Portland: 1991-2020 normals, Portland International Airport (9.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Portland is at its best in July and August, when highs reach 27-28°C and rain falls away to 13-14mm; September still holds 25°C. The rest of the year is cooler and much wetter.

San Francisco spreads its usable weather far wider, roughly April to October, with September the pick at 23°C and about 7mm of rain. Winter stays mild but wet, so a February trip works better there than in Portland.

Getting there

Flying fromSan FranciscoPortland
PhoenixPHX, AZA
1 h 55 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
5 h 20 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
1 h 20 m
no fares
OAK · 18 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
4 h 10 m
€196-293
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
DenverDEN, APA
2 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 30 m
€167-182
PDX · 10 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
MinneapolisMSP, STP
3 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
GuadalajaraGDL
3 h 45 m
no fares
OAK · 18 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
PDX · 10 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 FranciscoPortland
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation16 m152 m
Main airportSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinationsPortland International Airport (PDX)10 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan FranciscoPortland
City population873,965652,503
People per km²1,4551,736
Museums within 10 km5017
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre10882
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone–

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow San Francisco or Portland 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.