VacationSelector

San Jose or Valencia?

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.

Valencia
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife 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 JoseValencia
Beaches & swimming. Valencia leads by 59 points.59
San JoseValencia
Score867
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km112
Coast distance14 km3 km
Water distance14 km3 km
Places to eat. Valencia leads by 37 points.37
San JoseValencia
Score4178
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3131,995
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1633
Museums & heritage. Valencia leads by 29 points.29
San JoseValencia
Score2655
Museums within 10 km2059
Museums within 2 km of centre926
Share of museums within 2 km %4544
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. Valencia leads by 39 points.39
San JoseValencia
Score3170
Drinking venues within 4 km2311,513
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre88957
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3863
Nightclubs within 4 km16108
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 17 points.17
San JoseValencia
Score7053
Protected land share 50 km %2610
Landscape blanket share 50 km %20
Land share of disc %9164
Park area within 2 km101 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Valencia leads by 9 points.9
San JoseValencia
Score3342
Tourist attractions within 2 km212
Park area within 2 km101 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Valencia leads by 38 points.38
San JoseValencia
Score1452
Notable places within 2 km978
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Valencia leads by 28 points.28
San JoseValencia
Score4371
Price level global10060.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 1 points.1
San JoseValencia
Score8584
Monthly daytime high15.4 °C to 26.8 °C16.8 °C to 30.6 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 78 mm7 mm to 70 mm
Dry months88
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
Valencia
17
17
19
21
24
28
30
31
28
25
20
17
Sea temperature, °C
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Valencia
14
14
14
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Valencia
38
30
40
33
36
26
7
15
70
66
52
48
Daylight, hours per day
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Valencia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
San Jose
No sunshine record
Valencia
6
6
7
8
9
9
10
10
8
7
6
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). Valencia: 1991-2020 normals, Valencia (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan JoseValencia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 15 m
€80-167
VLC · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
1 h 55 m
€103-131
VLC · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 15 m
€128-199
1 stop
VLC · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 25 m
€155-178
VLC · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
12 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 0 m
€70-117
VLC · 9 km
MadridMAD
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
1 h 0 m
€69-81
VLC · 9 km
ZurichZRH
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 0 m
€151-206
1 stop
VLC · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
13 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
3 h 35 m
€167-378
VLC · 9 km
LisbonLIS
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
1 h 35 m
€56-140
VLC · 9 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
5 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 9 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 JoseValencia
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 m15 m
Main airportMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinationsValencia Airport (VLC)9 km from centre107 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan JoseValencia
City population1,013,240840,792
People per km²2,1676,242
Museums within 10 km1946
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre3092
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 Valencia 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.