VacationSelector

San Francisco or Sydney?

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 Francisco
62
match

Wins on places to eat and sights concentration with your weighting.

Sydney
64
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nightlife 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 FranciscoSydney
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco and Sydney are level on 60.
San FranciscoSydney
Score6060
Swim season months06
Beaches 10 km44160
Coast distance2 km7 km
Water distance2 km7 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 5 points.5
San FranciscoSydney
Score8378
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,3592,205
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3931
Museums & heritage. Sydney leads by 7 points.7
San FranciscoSydney
Score4451
Museums within 10 km5744
Museums within 2 km of centre2920
Share of museums within 2 km %5145
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. Sydney leads by 7 points.7
San FranciscoSydney
Score6875
Drinking venues within 4 km1,4342,050
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre9281,405
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6569
Nightclubs within 4 km97120
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 2 points.2
San FranciscoSydney
Score6058
Protected land share 50 km %1710
Landscape blanket share 50 km %40
Land share of disc %5752
Park area within 2 km45 hectares115 hectares
Good for families. Sydney leads by 7 points.7
San FranciscoSydney
Score5764
Tourist attractions within 2 km4837
Park area within 2 km45 hectares115 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 3 points.3
San FranciscoSydney
Score6360
Notable places within 2 km147123
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sydney leads by 7 points.7
San FranciscoSydney
Score4350
Price level global10090.2
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Sydney leads by 3 points.3
San FranciscoSydney
Score7881
Monthly daytime high14 °C to 23.2 °C17.7 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 105 mm55 mm to 121 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
Sydney
28
27
26
23
21
18
18
19
22
24
25
26
Sea temperature, °C
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Sydney
23
23
23
22
21
20
19
18
18
19
20
21
Rainfall, mm
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Sydney
80
116
90
95
89
121
70
63
57
55
71
68
Daylight, hours per day
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sydney
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Sunshine, hours per day
San Francisco
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 Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre). Sydney: 1991-2020 normals, Sydney Airport (3.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan FranciscoSydney
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
9 h 50 m
€671
SYD · 9 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 18 km
10 h 30 m
€548-574
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
15 h 20 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
19 h 30 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
20 h 40 m
€931-1073
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
1 h 20 m
no fares
OAK · 18 km
14 h 50 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
16 h 55 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
16 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
8 h 5 m
€498-549
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
MelbourneAVV, MEL, MEB
15 h 35 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
1 h 35 m
€125-169
SYD · 9 km
DohaDOH
15 h 55 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
15 h 15 m
€997-1100
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 2026-08 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 FranciscoSydney
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
Elevation16 m6 m
Main airportSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 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 FranciscoSydney
City population873,9655,450,496
People per km²1,455449
Museums within 10 km5038
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre10879
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone6 months

Where else could you go?

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