VacationSelector

San Francisco or Tokyo?

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

Your match

San Francisco
62
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Tokyo
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife and 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 FranciscoTokyo
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 39 points.39
San FranciscoTokyo
Score6021
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km441
Coast distance2 km5 km
Water distance2 km5 km
Places to eat. Tokyo leads by 7 points.7
San FranciscoTokyo
Score8390
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,3596,936
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3925
Museums & heritage. Tokyo leads by 22 points.22
San FranciscoTokyo
Score4466
Museums within 10 km57302
Museums within 2 km of centre2952
Share of museums within 2 km %5117
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Tokyo leads by 27 points.27
San FranciscoTokyo
Score6895
Drinking venues within 4 km1,4346,895
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre9283,033
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6544
Nightclubs within 4 km9758
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 2 points.2
San FranciscoTokyo
Score6058
Protected land share 50 km %17
Landscape blanket share 50 km %40
Land share of disc %5785
Park area within 2 km45 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Tokyo leads by 14 points.14
San FranciscoTokyo
Score5771
Tourist attractions within 2 km4840
Park area within 2 km45 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km19
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 3 points.3
San FranciscoTokyo
Score6360
Notable places within 2 km147121
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tokyo leads by 27 points.27
San FranciscoTokyo
Score4370
Price level global10062.4
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 14 points.14
San FranciscoTokyo
Score7864
Monthly daytime high14 °C to 23.2 °C10 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 105 mm57 mm to 237 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
Tokyo
10
11
14
19
24
26
30
32
28
22
17
12
Sea temperature, °C
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Tokyo
14
13
13
15
18
21
23
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Tokyo
60
57
117
134
140
168
157
155
221
237
97
58
Daylight, hours per day
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Tokyo
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
San Francisco
No sunshine record
Tokyo
6
6
6
6
6
4
5
6
4
4
5
6

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). Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan FranciscoTokyo
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 18 km
2 h 10 m
€124-187
NRT · 56 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
13 h 30 m
€813-1004
HND · 18 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
12 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 45 m
€296-314
HND · 18 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
9 h 30 m
€595-735
1 stop
NRT · 56 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
12 h 55 m
€966-988
1 stop
HND · 18 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
1 h 20 m
no fares
OAK · 18 km
11 h 0 m
€789-943
HND · 18 km
Hong KongHKG
13 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
4 h 10 m
€255-268
NRT · 56 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
11 h 40 m
€786-939
1 stop
HND · 18 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
4 h 15 m
no fares
OAK · 18 km
13 h 55 m
no fares
NRT · 56 km
DohaDOH
15 h 55 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
10 h 25 m
€931-1048
1 stop
HND · 18 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 FranciscoTokyo
Official languageJapanese
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Yen (JPY)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number911Police 110, fire 119
Elevation16 m6 m
Main airportSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinationsTokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan FranciscoTokyo
City population873,96514,264,798
People per km²1,4556,501
Museums within 10 km50191
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre108125
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone4 months

Where else could you go?

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