VacationSelector

San Francisco or Tirana?

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.

Tirana
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 FranciscoTirana
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 43 points.43
San FranciscoTirana
Score6017
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km440
Coast distance2 km26 km
Water distance2 km26 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 28 points.28
San FranciscoTirana
Score8355
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,359572
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3922
Museums & heritage. San Francisco leads by 19 points.19
San FranciscoTirana
Score4425
Museums within 10 km5712
Museums within 2 km of centre298
Share of museums within 2 km %5167
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 10 points.10
San FranciscoTirana
Score6858
Drinking venues within 4 km1,434945
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre928683
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6572
Nightclubs within 4 km9729
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 11 points.11
San FranciscoTirana
Score6049
Protected land share 50 km %1711
Landscape blanket share 50 km %43
Land share of disc %5783
Park area within 2 km45 hectares147 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 5 points.5
San FranciscoTirana
Score5752
Tourist attractions within 2 km4821
Park area within 2 km45 hectares147 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 10 points.10
San FranciscoTirana
Score6353
Notable places within 2 km14783
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tirana leads by 41 points.41
San FranciscoTirana
Score4384
Price level global10042.6
Daily budget€76
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 11 points.11
San FranciscoTirana
Score7867
Monthly daytime high14 °C to 23.2 °C11.6 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 105 mm43 mm to 172 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
Tirana
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Tirana
15
14
14
16
19
23
24
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Tirana
143
117
116
103
84
66
43
55
78
114
172
148
Daylight, hours per day
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Tirana
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
San Francisco
No sunshine record
Tirana
4
4
5
6
9
10
12
11
9
7
4
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). Tirana: 1961-1990 normals, Tirana (3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan FranciscoTirana
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 30 m
€73-102
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 55 m
€62-138
TIA · 13 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 5 m
€68-80
TIA · 13 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 10 m
€94-143
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
TIA · 13 km
BarcelonaBCN
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
2 h 25 m
€74-123
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
13 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
1 h 35 m
€100-109
TIA · 13 km
CopenhagenCPH
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 35 m
€109-148
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
MunichMUC
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
TIA · 13 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
5 h 5 m
no fares
TIA · 13 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 2026-09, 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 FranciscoTirana
Official languageAlbanian
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Lek (ALL)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation16 m110 m
Main airportSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinationsTirana International Airport Mother Teresa (TIA)13 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan FranciscoTirana
City population873,965389,323
People per km²1,4559,314
Museums within 10 km5011
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre10846
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

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