VacationSelector

San Francisco 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 Francisco
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on value for money 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 FranciscoSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 5 points.5
San FranciscoSan Sebastian
Score6055
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km4410
Coast distance2 km0 km
Water distance2 km0 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 28 points.28
San FranciscoSan Sebastian
Score8355
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,359472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3926
Museums & heritage. San Francisco leads by 5 points.5
San FranciscoSan Sebastian
Score4439
Museums within 10 km5717
Museums within 2 km of centre297
Share of museums within 2 km %5141
Unesco sites within 50 km03
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 28 points.28
San FranciscoSan Sebastian
Score6840
Drinking venues within 4 km1,434388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre928338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6587
Nightclubs within 4 km9712
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 4 points.4
San FranciscoSan Sebastian
Score6056
Protected land share 50 km %1711
Landscape blanket share 50 km %40
Land share of disc %5752
Park area within 2 km45 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 27 points.27
San FranciscoSan Sebastian
Score5730
Tourist attractions within 2 km485
Park area within 2 km45 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 9 points.9
San FranciscoSan Sebastian
Score6354
Notable places within 2 km14789
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 28 points.28
San FranciscoSan Sebastian
Score4371
Price level global10060.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 20 points.20
San FranciscoSan Sebastian
Score7858
Monthly daytime high14 °C to 23.2 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 105 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months70
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 Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
San Francisco
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 Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan FranciscoSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MunichMUC
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
MadridMAD
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
BarcelonaBCN
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
LisbonLIS
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
1 h 30 m
€129-223
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
13 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 75 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 FranciscoSan 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
Elevation16 m6 m
Main airportSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan FranciscoSan Sebastian
City population873,965189,866
People per km²1,4553,118
Museums within 10 km5014
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km03
Distinct cuisines in the centre10845
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone2 months

Where else could you go?

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