VacationSelector

San Jose or Tirana?

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.

Tirana
✓ Best match
51
match

Wins on value for money 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 JoseTirana
Beaches & swimming. Tirana leads by 9 points.9
San JoseTirana
Score817
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km10
Coast distance14 km26 km
Water distance14 km26 km
Places to eat. Tirana leads by 14 points.14
San JoseTirana
Score4155
Restaurants within 2 km of centre313572
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1622
Museums & heritage. San Jose leads by 1 points.1
San JoseTirana
Score2625
Museums within 10 km2012
Museums within 2 km of centre98
Share of museums within 2 km %4567
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Tirana leads by 27 points.27
San JoseTirana
Score3158
Drinking venues within 4 km231945
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre88683
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3872
Nightclubs within 4 km1629
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 21 points.21
San JoseTirana
Score7049
Protected land share 50 km %2611
Landscape blanket share 50 km %23
Land share of disc %9183
Park area within 2 km101 hectares147 hectares
Good for families. Tirana leads by 19 points.19
San JoseTirana
Score3352
Tourist attractions within 2 km221
Park area within 2 km101 hectares147 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Tirana leads by 39 points.39
San JoseTirana
Score1453
Notable places within 2 km983
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tirana leads by 41 points.41
San JoseTirana
Score4384
Price level global10042.6
Daily budget€76
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 18 points.18
San JoseTirana
Score8567
Monthly daytime high15.4 °C to 26.8 °C11.6 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 78 mm43 mm to 172 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
Tirana
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Tirana
15
14
14
16
19
23
24
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Tirana
143
117
116
103
84
66
43
55
78
114
172
148
Daylight, hours per day
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Tirana
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
San Jose
No sunshine record
Tirana
4
4
5
6
9
10
12
11
9
7
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). Tirana: 1961-1990 normals, Tirana (3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan JoseTirana
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 30 m
€73-102
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 55 m
€62-138
TIA · 13 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 5 m
€68-80
TIA · 13 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 10 m
€94-143
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
4 h 55 m
€339-541
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
TIA · 13 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
13 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
1 h 35 m
€100-109
TIA · 13 km
CopenhagenCPH
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 35 m
€109-148
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
BarcelonaBCN
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
2 h 25 m
€74-123
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 35 m
€169-220
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
5 h 5 m
no fares
TIA · 13 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 2026-09, 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 JoseTirana
Official languageAlbanian
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Lek (ALL)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation25 m110 m
Main airportMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinationsTirana International Airport Mother Teresa (TIA)13 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan JoseTirana
City population1,013,240389,323
People per km²2,1679,314
Museums within 10 km1911
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre3046
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 Tirana 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.