VacationSelector

San Jose or Sao Paulo?

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 beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Sao Paulo
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on nightlife 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 JoseSao Paulo
Beaches & swimming. San Jose leads by 8 points.8
San JoseSao Paulo
Score80
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km10
Coast distance14 km51 km
Water distance14 km
Places to eat. Sao Paulo leads by 32 points.32
San JoseSao Paulo
Score4173
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3131,735
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1627
Museums & heritage. Sao Paulo leads by 17 points.17
San JoseSao Paulo
Score2643
Museums within 10 km2082
Museums within 2 km of centre926
Share of museums within 2 km %4532
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Sao Paulo leads by 41 points.41
San JoseSao Paulo
Score3172
Drinking venues within 4 km2311,747
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre88896
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3851
Nightclubs within 4 km16118
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 19 points.19
San JoseSao Paulo
Score7051
Protected land share 50 km %2626
Landscape blanket share 50 km %215
Land share of disc %9195
Park area within 2 km101 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. Sao Paulo leads by 22 points.22
San JoseSao Paulo
Score3355
Tourist attractions within 2 km238
Park area within 2 km101 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Sao Paulo leads by 36 points.36
San JoseSao Paulo
Score1450
Notable places within 2 km968
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sao Paulo leads by 38 points.38
San JoseSao Paulo
Score4381
Price level global10046.1
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 2 points.2
San JoseSao Paulo
Score8583
Monthly daytime high15.4 °C to 26.8 °C22.8 °C to 29.2 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 78 mm26 mm to 297 mm
Dry months81
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
Sao Paulo
28
29
28
27
24
23
23
25
25
27
27
28
Sea temperature, °C
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Sao Paulo
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Sao Paulo
297
259
206
89
64
55
53
26
82
128
146
234
Daylight, hours per day
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sao Paulo
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Sunshine, hours per day
San Jose
No sunshine record
Sao Paulo
4
6
6
5
5
5
6
6
5
6
5
5

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). Sao Paulo: 1991-2020 normals, Sao Paulo (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan JoseSao Paulo
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
9 h 40 m
€576-611
GRU · 21 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
12 h 10 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
BostonBOS, PSM
5 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
5 h 15 m
€252-262
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
15 h 0 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
11 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
21 h 20 m
€1,139-1567
2 stops
GRU · 21 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 JoseSao Paulo
Official languagePortuguese
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Brazilian Real (BRL)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCN60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC-3
Emergency number911Police 190, ambulance 192, fire 193
Elevation25 m760 m
Main airportMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinationsSão Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU)21 km from centre102 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan JoseSao Paulo
City population1,013,24011,451,999
People per km²2,1677,519
Museums within 10 km1990
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre3059
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow San Jose or Sao Paulo 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.