VacationSelector

San Jose or Zurich?

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.

Zurich
✓ Best match
44
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage 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 JoseZurich
Beaches & swimming. San Jose leads by 8 points.8
San JoseZurich
Score80
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km123
Coast distance14 km632 km
Water distance14 km
Places to eat. Zurich leads by 26 points.26
San JoseZurich
Score4167
Restaurants within 2 km of centre313974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1630
Museums & heritage. Zurich leads by 30 points.30
San JoseZurich
Score2656
Museums within 10 km2076
Museums within 2 km of centre937
Share of museums within 2 km %4549
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Zurich leads by 23 points.23
San JoseZurich
Score3154
Drinking venues within 4 km231676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre88553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3882
Nightclubs within 4 km1674
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 33 points.33
San JoseZurich
Score7037
Protected land share 50 km %2616
Landscape blanket share 50 km %29
Land share of disc %91100
Park area within 2 km101 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Zurich leads by 3 points.3
San JoseZurich
Score3336
Tourist attractions within 2 km28
Park area within 2 km101 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Zurich leads by 45 points.45
San JoseZurich
Score1459
Notable places within 2 km9119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Jose leads by 8 points.8
San JoseZurich
Score4335
Price level global100110.5
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 32 points.32
San JoseZurich
Score8553
Monthly daytime high15.4 °C to 26.8 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 78 mm60 mm to 128 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
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
San Jose
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
San Jose
No sunshine record
Zurich
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1

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). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan JoseZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
11 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 57 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
10 h 35 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
13 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 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 2026-09 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 JoseZurich
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation25 m408 m
Main airportMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan JoseZurich
City population1,013,240452,421
People per km²2,1675,147
Museums within 10 km1963
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre3078
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 Zurich 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.