VacationSelector

San Sebastian or Seattle?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on value for money and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Seattle
52
match

Wins on places to eat 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 SebastianSeattle
Beaches & swimming. Seattle leads by 5 points.5
San SebastianSeattle
Score5560
Swim season months20
Beaches 10 km10100
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Seattle leads by 20 points.20
San SebastianSeattle
Score5575
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4721,460
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2635
Museums & heritage. San Sebastian leads by 3 points.3
San SebastianSeattle
Score3936
Museums within 10 km1728
Museums within 2 km of centre717
Share of museums within 2 km %4161
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Seattle leads by 17 points.17
San SebastianSeattle
Score4057
Drinking venues within 4 km388873
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre338696
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8780
Nightclubs within 4 km1234
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 16 points.16
San SebastianSeattle
Score5640
Protected land share 50 km %119
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5280
Park area within 2 km70 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Seattle leads by 16 points.16
San SebastianSeattle
Score3046
Tourist attractions within 2 km517
Park area within 2 km70 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 2 points.2
San SebastianSeattle
Score5452
Notable places within 2 km8976
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 28 points.28
San SebastianSeattle
Score7143
Price level global60.8100
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Seattle leads by 3 points.3
San SebastianSeattle
Score5861
Monthly daytime high11.2 °C to 22.9 °C7.8 °C to 24.9 °C
Monthly rainfall92 mm to 203 mm15 mm to 160 mm
Dry months03
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 Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Seattle
8
10
12
15
19
21
25
25
22
15
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Seattle
8
8
8
9
10
11
12
12
11
10
9
9
Rainfall, mm
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Seattle
147
96
106
81
48
37
15
25
41
99
160
147
Daylight, hours per day
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Seattle
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
San Sebastian
3
4
5
5
7
6
7
6
6
5
3
3
Seattle
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre). Seattle: 1991-2020 normals, Seattle-Tacoma Airport (17.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan SebastianSeattle
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
10 h 20 m
€554-583
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
10 h 40 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
5 h 15 m
€300-424
SEA · 18 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 10 m
€77-99
BIO · 75 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 75 km
12 h 10 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
DublinDUB
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIQ · 40 km
9 h 15 m
no fares
SEA · 18 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 SebastianSeattle
Official languageSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation6 m40 m
Main airportSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinationsSeattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)18 km from centre135 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan SebastianSeattle
City population189,866737,015
People per km²3,1181,996
Museums within 10 km1427
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre4578
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow San Sebastian or Seattle 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.