VacationSelector

San Francisco or Santiago de Compostela?

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 places to eat with your weighting.

Santiago de Compostela
42
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 FranciscoSantiago de Compostela
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 60 points.60
San FranciscoSantiago de Compostela
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km440
Coast distance2 km26 km
Water distance2 km26 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 35 points.35
San FranciscoSantiago de Compostela
Score8348
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,359336
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3923
Museums & heritage. San Francisco and Santiago de Compostela are level on 44.
San FranciscoSantiago de Compostela
Score4444
Museums within 10 km5716
Museums within 2 km of centre2914
Share of museums within 2 km %5188
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 32 points.32
San FranciscoSantiago de Compostela
Score6836
Drinking venues within 4 km1,434306
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre928268
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6588
Nightclubs within 4 km9713
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 14 points.14
San FranciscoSantiago de Compostela
Score6046
Protected land share 50 km %1711
Landscape blanket share 50 km %40
Land share of disc %5792
Park area within 2 km45 hectares109 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 30 points.30
San FranciscoSantiago de Compostela
Score5727
Tourist attractions within 2 km482
Park area within 2 km45 hectares109 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 21 points.21
San FranciscoSantiago de Compostela
Score6342
Notable places within 2 km14744
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Santiago de Compostela leads by 28 points.28
San FranciscoSantiago de Compostela
Score4371
Price level global10060.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 16 points.16
San FranciscoSantiago de Compostela
Score7862
Monthly daytime high14 °C to 23.2 °C11.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 105 mm41 mm to 223 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
Santiago de Compostela
11
13
15
17
20
23
25
25
23
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Santiago de Compostela
14
13
13
14
15
16
17
17
17
16
15
14
Rainfall, mm
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Santiago de Compostela
217
149
153
136
116
61
41
61
91
208
223
222
Daylight, hours per day
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Santiago de Compostela
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
San Francisco
No sunshine record
Santiago de Compostela
3
4
5
6
7
7
8
8
6
4
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). Santiago de Compostela: 1991-2020 normals, Santiago / Labacolla (8.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan FranciscoSantiago de Compostela
BarcelonaBCN
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
1 h 40 m
€71-184
SCQ · 10 km
MadridMAD
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
1 h 15 m
€86-122
SCQ · 10 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
DublinDUB
10 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
ZurichZRH
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
SCQ · 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 2026-08 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 FranciscoSantiago de Compostela
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 m260 m
Main airportSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinationsSantiago-Rosalía de Castro Airport (SCQ)10 km from centre27 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan FranciscoSantiago de Compostela
City population873,965100,965
People per km²1,455459
Museums within 10 km506
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre10838
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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