VacationSelector

San Jose or San Francisco?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

San Jose
39
match

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

San Francisco
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose San Francisco if you want the city itself: the coast 2km from the centre, restaurants and bars in far greater number and variety, and most of the notable sights within walking distance.

Choose San Jose if you want warmth and open country: more protected land around it, more park space near the centre, and summer highs of 27°C rather than 23°C.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

San JoseSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 52 points.52
San JoseSan Francisco
Score860
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km144
Coast distance14 km2 km
Water distance14 km2 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 42 points.42
San JoseSan Francisco
Score4183
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3132,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1639
Museums & heritage. San Francisco leads by 18 points.18
San JoseSan Francisco
Score2644
Museums within 10 km2057
Museums within 2 km of centre929
Share of museums within 2 km %4551
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 37 points.37
San JoseSan Francisco
Score3168
Drinking venues within 4 km2311,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre88928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3865
Nightclubs within 4 km1697
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 10 points.10
San JoseSan Francisco
Score7060
Protected land share 50 km %2617
Landscape blanket share 50 km %24
Land share of disc %9157
Park area within 2 km101 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 24 points.24
San JoseSan Francisco
Score3357
Tourist attractions within 2 km248
Park area within 2 km101 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 49 points.49
San JoseSan Francisco
Score1463
Notable places within 2 km9147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Jose and San Francisco are level on 43.
San JoseSan Francisco
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 7 points.7
San JoseSan Francisco
Score8578
Monthly daytime high15.4 °C to 26.8 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 78 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months87
0255075100

Where they differ

San Francisco puts the coast within reach: the sea is 2km from the centre against 14km at San Jose, and 44 beaches nearby against San Jose's one. Restaurants near the centre are many times more numerous, with a wider range of kitchens, and far more notable places sit within walking distance.

San Jose's strengths are open land and warmth. 26% of the land around it is protected against 17% around San Francisco, there is more park space near the centre, and 2 theme parks within reach against 1.

Where they are alike

Neither city has a hard season. Both are coolest in January, at 14°C and 15°C, and both dry out through summer, so the year splits into wet and dry halves rather than hot and cold ones. Sea temperatures stay under 21°C all year in both.

Both have protected country and parks within day-trip reach, and neither is a museum city: holdings are modest on both sides, and neither has a UNESCO-listed place within day-trip reach.

Which traveller are you?

If you are travelling for food and nights out, San Francisco is the clear pick: many times as many restaurants near the centre, a much wider range of kitchens, and far more bars and clubs, most of them close in.

Families with young children who want space will do better in San Jose, with more park space near the centre and 2 theme parks within reach against 1, though the attractions themselves cluster in San Francisco.

A short-stay sightseer without a car should take San Francisco, where most notable places are within walking distance of the centre and the sea is 2km away, with 44 beaches nearby.

What the numbers don't tell you

No cost comparison is possible here. The dataset carries no daily budget figure for either city, and the value rating is a national price level, so it is identical for both by construction. It tells you nothing about whether one trip will cost more than the other.

The sunshine figure is missing for both, so that side of the weather comparison is unmeasured, and the monthly ratings rest on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone. San Francisco's coastal advantage is also about access rather than swimming: 44 beaches and the sea 2km from the centre, but the water never reaches 21°C in any month.

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 Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
San Francisco
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 Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

San Francisco is at its best from August to October: highs of 22-23°C, the warmest sea of the year at 14°C, and next to no rain. Winter is the trade-off, with 105mm in January and cooler, wetter days.

San Jose peaks earlier and holds longer. June to September runs at 26-27°C with 0-2mm of rain, warm enough that shade matters at midday, and its cool months stay drier: 50mm in January, with highs of 15°C.

Getting there

Flying fromSan JoseSan Francisco
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 57 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 18 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 JoseSan Francisco
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation25 m16 m
Main airportMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan JoseSan Francisco
City population1,013,240873,965
People per km²2,1671,455
Museums within 10 km1950
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre30108
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 Jose or San Francisco 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.