VacationSelector

San Francisco or Washington DC?

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 beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on sights concentration 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 FranciscoWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 42 points.42
San FranciscoWashington DC
Score6018
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km441
Coast distance2 km34 km
Water distance2 km34 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 6 points.6
San FranciscoWashington DC
Score8377
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,3591,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3936
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 11 points.11
San FranciscoWashington DC
Score4455
Museums within 10 km5783
Museums within 2 km of centre2955
Share of museums within 2 km %5166
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 7 points.7
San FranciscoWashington DC
Score6861
Drinking venues within 4 km1,4341,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre928593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6558
Nightclubs within 4 km9754
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 18 points.18
San FranciscoWashington DC
Score6042
Protected land share 50 km %1710
Landscape blanket share 50 km %41
Land share of disc %5794
Park area within 2 km45 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 19 points.19
San FranciscoWashington DC
Score5738
Tourist attractions within 2 km487
Park area within 2 km45 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 13 points.13
San FranciscoWashington DC
Score6376
Notable places within 2 km147305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Francisco and Washington DC are level on 43.
San FranciscoWashington DC
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 16 points.16
San FranciscoWashington DC
Score7862
Monthly daytime high14 °C to 23.2 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 105 mm65 mm to 108 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
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10

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). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan FranciscoWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
4 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
13 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
MinneapolisMSP, STP
3 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
BostonBOS, PSM
5 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
1 h 25 m
€162-173
DCA · 5 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
San SalvadorSAL, ILS
5 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
4 h 15 m
€548-564
IAD · 37 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 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 FranciscoWashington DC
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation16 m72 m
Main airportSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan FranciscoWashington DC
City population873,965689,545
People per km²1,4553,896
Museums within 10 km5099
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre10882
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone3 months

Where else could you go?

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