VacationSelector

San Francisco or Valencia?

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 good for families and sights concentration with your weighting.

Valencia
64
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage 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 FranciscoValencia
Beaches & swimming. Valencia leads by 7 points.7
San FranciscoValencia
Score6067
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km4412
Coast distance2 km3 km
Water distance2 km3 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 5 points.5
San FranciscoValencia
Score8378
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,3591,995
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3933
Museums & heritage. Valencia leads by 11 points.11
San FranciscoValencia
Score4455
Museums within 10 km5759
Museums within 2 km of centre2926
Share of museums within 2 km %5144
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. Valencia leads by 2 points.2
San FranciscoValencia
Score6870
Drinking venues within 4 km1,4341,513
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre928957
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6563
Nightclubs within 4 km97108
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 7 points.7
San FranciscoValencia
Score6053
Protected land share 50 km %1710
Landscape blanket share 50 km %40
Land share of disc %5764
Park area within 2 km45 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 15 points.15
San FranciscoValencia
Score5742
Tourist attractions within 2 km4812
Park area within 2 km45 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 11 points.11
San FranciscoValencia
Score6352
Notable places within 2 km14778
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Valencia leads by 28 points.28
San FranciscoValencia
Score4371
Price level global10060.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Valencia leads by 6 points.6
San FranciscoValencia
Score7884
Monthly daytime high14 °C to 23.2 °C16.8 °C to 30.6 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 105 mm7 mm to 70 mm
Dry months78
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
Valencia
17
17
19
21
24
28
30
31
28
25
20
17
Sea temperature, °C
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Valencia
14
14
14
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Valencia
38
30
40
33
36
26
7
15
70
66
52
48
Daylight, hours per day
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Valencia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
San Francisco
No sunshine record
Valencia
6
6
7
8
9
9
10
10
8
7
6
5

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). Valencia: 1991-2020 normals, Valencia (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan FranciscoValencia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 15 m
€80-167
VLC · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
1 h 55 m
€103-131
VLC · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 15 m
€128-199
1 stop
VLC · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 25 m
€155-178
VLC · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
12 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 0 m
€70-117
VLC · 9 km
MadridMAD
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
1 h 0 m
€69-81
VLC · 9 km
MunichMUC
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 20 m
€196-284
1 stop
VLC · 9 km
ZurichZRH
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 0 m
€151-206
1 stop
VLC · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
13 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
3 h 35 m
€167-378
VLC · 9 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
5 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 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 FranciscoValencia
Official languageSpanish
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation16 m15 m
Main airportSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinationsValencia Airport (VLC)9 km from centre107 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan FranciscoValencia
City population873,965840,792
People per km²1,4556,242
Museums within 10 km5046
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre10892
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 Valencia 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.