VacationSelector

San Jose or Thessaloniki?

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

Thessaloniki
✓ Best match
59
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.

Scoreboard

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

San JoseThessaloniki
Beaches & swimming. Thessaloniki leads by 47 points.47
San JoseThessaloniki
Score855
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km14
Coast distance14 km0 km
Water distance14 km0 km
Places to eat. Thessaloniki leads by 9 points.9
San JoseThessaloniki
Score4150
Restaurants within 2 km of centre313640
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1615
Museums & heritage. Thessaloniki leads by 23 points.23
San JoseThessaloniki
Score2649
Museums within 10 km2034
Museums within 2 km of centre922
Share of museums within 2 km %4565
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Thessaloniki leads by 36 points.36
San JoseThessaloniki
Score3167
Drinking venues within 4 km2311,407
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre88805
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3857
Nightclubs within 4 km1661
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 5 points.5
San JoseThessaloniki
Score7065
Protected land share 50 km %2625
Landscape blanket share 50 km %20
Land share of disc %9183
Park area within 2 km101 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Thessaloniki leads by 8 points.8
San JoseThessaloniki
Score3341
Tourist attractions within 2 km216
Park area within 2 km101 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Thessaloniki leads by 42 points.42
San JoseThessaloniki
Score1456
Notable places within 2 km998
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Thessaloniki leads by 31 points.31
San JoseThessaloniki
Score4374
Price level global10055.8
Daily budget€125
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 13 points.13
San JoseThessaloniki
Score8572
Monthly daytime high15.4 °C to 26.8 °C9.7 °C to 32.1 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 78 mm21 mm to 56 mm
Dry months89
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
Thessaloniki
10
11
15
19
25
30
32
32
27
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Thessaloniki
14
13
13
15
19
23
26
27
25
21
18
15
Rainfall, mm
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Thessaloniki
35
32
38
36
44
30
23
21
33
41
38
56
Daylight, hours per day
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Thessaloniki
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
San Jose
No sunshine record
Thessaloniki
4
4
6
6
9
11
11
10
8
6
4
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). Thessaloniki: 1991-2020 normals, Thessaloniki Airport (14 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan JoseThessaloniki
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
3 h 15 m
€95-156
SKG · 14 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 30 m
€119-127
SKG · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 50 m
€98-154
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
MunichMUC
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 10 m
€188-242
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
13 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
1 h 15 m
€151-156
SKG · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 55 m
€225-285
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
ZurichZRH
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
12 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
1 h 45 m
€117-203
1 stop
SKG · 14 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 JoseThessaloniki
Official languageGreek
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation25 m6 m
Main airportMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinationsThessaloniki Macedonia International Airport (SKG)14 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan JoseThessaloniki
City population1,013,240309,617
People per km²2,16716,042
Museums within 10 km1931
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre3045
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

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