VacationSelector

San Francisco or Tromso?

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 nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Tromso
27
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 FranciscoTromso
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 8 points.8
San FranciscoTromso
Score6052
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km4414
Coast distance2 km0 km
Water distance2 km0 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 59 points.59
San FranciscoTromso
Score8324
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,35985
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3916
Museums & heritage. San Francisco leads by 21 points.21
San FranciscoTromso
Score4423
Museums within 10 km5710
Museums within 2 km of centre298
Share of museums within 2 km %5180
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 61 points.61
San FranciscoTromso
Score687
Drinking venues within 4 km1,43467
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre92861
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6591
Nightclubs within 4 km975
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 49 points.49
San FranciscoTromso
Score6011
Protected land share 50 km %179
Landscape blanket share 50 km %49
Land share of disc %5765
Park area within 2 km45 hectares7 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 43 points.43
San FranciscoTromso
Score5714
Tourist attractions within 2 km489
Park area within 2 km45 hectares7 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 35 points.35
San FranciscoTromso
Score6328
Notable places within 2 km14720
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tromso leads by 11 points.11
San FranciscoTromso
Score4354
Price level global10085.1
Daily budget—€203
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 45 points.45
San FranciscoTromso
Score7833
Monthly daytime high14 °C to 23.2 °C-1.1 °C to 16.3 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 105 mm56 mm to 128 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
Tromso
-1
-1
1
4
9
13
16
15
11
5
2
0
Sea temperature, °C
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Tromso
5
5
4
4
6
8
10
11
10
9
7
6
Rainfall, mm
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Tromso
108
95
97
71
56
57
73
90
110
128
94
110
Daylight, hours per day
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Tromso
2
7
12
16
22
24
24
18
14
9
4
0
Sunshine, hours per day
San Francisco
No sunshine record
Tromso
0
1
3
6
8
8
8
6
3
2
0
0

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). Tromso: 1991-2020 normals, Tromso (0.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan FranciscoTromso
CopenhagenCPH
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
ZurichZRH
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
3 h 40 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
MunichMUC
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
3 h 30 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
BarcelonaBCN
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
MadridMAD
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
DublinDUB
10 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
TOS · 4 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 FranciscoTromso
Official language–Norwegian, Nynorsk, Bokmål, Sámi
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Norwegian Krone (NOK)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911Police 112, ambulance 113, fire 110
Elevation16 m20 m
Main airportSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinationsTromsø Airport (TOS)4 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan FranciscoTromso
City population873,96579,943
People per km²1,45532
Museums within 10 km508
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre10823
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 Tromso 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.