VacationSelector

San Jose or Santiago de Compostela?

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.

Santiago de Compostela
✓ Best match
42
match

Wins on sights concentration 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 JoseSantiago de Compostela
Beaches & swimming. San Jose leads by 8 points.8
San JoseSantiago de Compostela
Score80
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km10
Coast distance14 km26 km
Water distance14 km26 km
Places to eat. Santiago de Compostela leads by 7 points.7
San JoseSantiago de Compostela
Score4148
Restaurants within 2 km of centre313336
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1623
Museums & heritage. Santiago de Compostela leads by 18 points.18
San JoseSantiago de Compostela
Score2644
Museums within 10 km2016
Museums within 2 km of centre914
Share of museums within 2 km %4588
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. Santiago de Compostela leads by 5 points.5
San JoseSantiago de Compostela
Score3136
Drinking venues within 4 km231306
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre88268
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3888
Nightclubs within 4 km1613
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 24 points.24
San JoseSantiago de Compostela
Score7046
Protected land share 50 km %2611
Landscape blanket share 50 km %20
Land share of disc %9192
Park area within 2 km101 hectares109 hectares
Good for families. San Jose leads by 6 points.6
San JoseSantiago de Compostela
Score3327
Tourist attractions within 2 km22
Park area within 2 km101 hectares109 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Santiago de Compostela leads by 28 points.28
San JoseSantiago de Compostela
Score1442
Notable places within 2 km944
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Santiago de Compostela leads by 28 points.28
San JoseSantiago de Compostela
Score4371
Price level global10060.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 23 points.23
San JoseSantiago de Compostela
Score8562
Monthly daytime high15.4 °C to 26.8 °C11.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 78 mm41 mm to 223 mm
Dry months80
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 Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Santiago de Compostela
11
13
15
17
20
23
25
25
23
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Santiago de Compostela
14
13
13
14
15
16
17
17
17
16
15
14
Rainfall, mm
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Santiago de Compostela
217
149
153
136
116
61
41
61
91
208
223
222
Daylight, hours per day
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Santiago de Compostela
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
San Jose
No sunshine record
Santiago de Compostela
3
4
5
6
7
7
8
8
6
4
3
3

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). Santiago de Compostela: 1991-2020 normals, Santiago / Labacolla (8.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan JoseSantiago de Compostela
MadridMAD
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
1 h 15 m
€86-122
SCQ · 10 km
BarcelonaBCN
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
1 h 40 m
€71-184
SCQ · 10 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
DublinDUB
10 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
ZurichZRH
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 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 JoseSantiago de Compostela
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
Elevation25 m260 m
Main airportMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinationsSantiago-Rosalía de Castro Airport (SCQ)10 km from centre27 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan JoseSantiago de Compostela
City population1,013,240100,965
People per km²2,167459
Museums within 10 km196
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre3038
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 Santiago de Compostela 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.