VacationSelector

San Francisco or Vancouver?

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 year-round weather and sights concentration with your weighting.

Vancouver
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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 FranciscoVancouver
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco and Vancouver are level on 60.
San FranciscoVancouver
Score6060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km44109
Coast distance2 km1 km
Water distance2 km1 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 9 points.9
San FranciscoVancouver
Score8374
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,3591,330
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3935
Museums & heritage. San Francisco leads by 10 points.10
San FranciscoVancouver
Score4434
Museums within 10 km5727
Museums within 2 km of centre2915
Share of museums within 2 km %5156
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 11 points.11
San FranciscoVancouver
Score6857
Drinking venues within 4 km1,434848
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre928602
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6571
Nightclubs within 4 km9744
Nature & day trips. Vancouver leads by 17 points.17
San FranciscoVancouver
Score6077
Protected land share 50 km %1719
Landscape blanket share 50 km %40
Land share of disc %5760
Park area within 2 km45 hectares103 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 4 points.4
San FranciscoVancouver
Score5753
Tourist attractions within 2 km4815
Park area within 2 km45 hectares103 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 15 points.15
San FranciscoVancouver
Score6348
Notable places within 2 km14763
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Vancouver leads by 11 points.11
San FranciscoVancouver
Score4354
Price level global10084
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 25 points.25
San FranciscoVancouver
Score7853
Monthly daytime high14 °C to 23.2 °C7.3 °C to 23 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 105 mm42 mm to 245 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
Vancouver
7
8
11
14
18
20
23
23
19
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Vancouver
7
7
8
10
12
14
16
16
14
11
9
8
Rainfall, mm
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Vancouver
237
121
164
114
73
65
42
49
71
155
245
196
Daylight, hours per day
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Vancouver
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
San Francisco
No sunshine record
Vancouver
2
3
4
6
8
7
10
9
7
4
2
2

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). Vancouver: 1991-2020 normals, Vancouver Harbour CS (4.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan FranciscoVancouver
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
1 h 55 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
5 h 15 m
€353-356
YVR · 9 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
1 h 20 m
no fares
OAK · 18 km
2 h 45 m
€147-217
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
4 h 35 m
€210-223
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 18 km
10 h 20 m
€629-762
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
MinneapolisMSP, STP
3 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
10 h 10 m
€743-810
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
4 h 15 m
no fares
OAK · 18 km
5 h 20 m
no fares
YVR · 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 2026-09 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 FranciscoVancouver
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-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation16 m2 m
Main airportSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinationsVancouver International Airport (YVR)9 km from centre99 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan FranciscoVancouver
City population873,965662,248
People per km²1,4555,759
Museums within 10 km5026
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre10885
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 Vancouver 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.