VacationSelector

San Francisco or Toronto?

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 nature & day trips and year-round weather with your weighting.

Toronto
54
match

Wins on value for money 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 FranciscoToronto
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 17 points.17
San FranciscoToronto
Score6043
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km4458
Coast distance2 km533 km
Water distance2 km5 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 1 points.1
San FranciscoToronto
Score8382
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,3592,133
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3939
Museums & heritage. San Francisco leads by 1 points.1
San FranciscoToronto
Score4443
Museums within 10 km5735
Museums within 2 km of centre2925
Share of museums within 2 km %5171
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Toronto leads by 1 points.1
San FranciscoToronto
Score6869
Drinking venues within 4 km1,4341,500
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre928966
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6564
Nightclubs within 4 km97103
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 34 points.34
San FranciscoToronto
Score6026
Protected land share 50 km %172
Landscape blanket share 50 km %40
Land share of disc %57100
Park area within 2 km45 hectares68 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco and Toronto are level on 57.
San FranciscoToronto
Score5757
Tourist attractions within 2 km4823
Park area within 2 km45 hectares68 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km14
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 2 points.2
San FranciscoToronto
Score6361
Notable places within 2 km147128
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Toronto leads by 11 points.11
San FranciscoToronto
Score4354
Price level global10084
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 23 points.23
San FranciscoToronto
Score7855
Monthly daytime high14 °C to 23.2 °C-0.2 °C to 27.4 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 105 mm51 mm to 85 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
Toronto
0
0
5
12
19
24
27
26
22
15
8
2
Sea temperature, °C
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Toronto
4
3
3
4
7
15
20
21
19
13
8
5
Rainfall, mm
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Toronto
62
58
51
74
58
85
83
69
62
75
65
66
Daylight, hours per day
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Toronto
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9

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). Toronto: 1991-2020 normals, Toronto City (1.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan FranciscoToronto
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
1 h 20 m
€244-359
YYZ · 20 km
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
12 h 50 m
no fares
YYZ · 20 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
4 h 35 m
€232-264
1 stop
YYZ · 20 km
MinneapolisMSP, STP
3 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
YYZ · 20 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
5 h 15 m
€252-262
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
1 h 20 m
€183-189
YYZ · 20 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
4 h 10 m
€196-293
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
1 h 30 m
€185-501
YYZ · 20 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
7 h 25 m
€443-479
1 stop
YYZ · 20 km
BostonBOS, PSM
5 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
1 h 30 m
€294-299
YYZ · 20 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
1 h 55 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
YYZ · 20 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
13 h 40 m
€717-891
YYZ · 20 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 2026-10, 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 FranciscoToronto
Official languageFrench, English
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation16 m76 m
Main airportSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinationsToronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ)20 km from centre189 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan FranciscoToronto
City population873,9652,794,356
People per km²1,4554,434
Museums within 10 km5032
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre108102
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone1 month

Where else could you go?

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