VacationSelector

San Sebastian or Seville?

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

Your match

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Seville
✓ Best match
54
match

Wins on good for families 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.

The verdict

Choose San Sebastian if you want to swim: 10 beaches nearby and a sea that reaches 22°C in August, plus protected country within easy reach for walking days.

Choose Seville if the city itself is the point: many more museums, bars and clubs near the centre, more for children to do, and warmth that holds through spring and autumn rather than a short summer.

Scoreboard

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

San SebastianSeville
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 55 points.55
San SebastianSeville
Score550
Swim season months20
Beaches 10 km102
Coast distance0 km65 km
Water distance0 km—
Places to eat. Seville leads by 11 points.11
San SebastianSeville
Score5566
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4721,370
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2622
Museums & heritage. Seville leads by 17 points.17
San SebastianSeville
Score3956
Museums within 10 km1750
Museums within 2 km of centre740
Share of museums within 2 km %4180
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Seville leads by 22 points.22
San SebastianSeville
Score4062
Drinking venues within 4 km3881,089
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre338679
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8762
Nightclubs within 4 km1257
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 19 points.19
San SebastianSeville
Score5637
Protected land share 50 km %118
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %52100
Park area within 2 km70 hectares82 hectares
Good for families. Seville leads by 35 points.35
San SebastianSeville
Score3065
Tourist attractions within 2 km547
Park area within 2 km70 hectares82 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Seville leads by 1 points.1
San SebastianSeville
Score5455
Notable places within 2 km8992
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian and Seville are level on 71.
San SebastianSeville
Score7171
Price level global60.860.8
Daily budget€122€122
Year-round weather. Seville leads by 17 points.17
San SebastianSeville
Score5875
Monthly daytime high11.2 °C to 22.9 °C16.3 °C to 36.2 °C
Monthly rainfall92 mm to 203 mm1 mm to 78 mm
Dry months05
0255075100

Where they differ

San Sebastian is the one with a coast: 10 beaches close by against Seville's 2, and two months when the sea reaches 21°C or more, which Seville never manages. The countryside around it is more protected too, 11% of the land against 8%, which shows in the walking.

Seville is the stronger city itself. It has many more places to drink and far more nightclubs, most of them near the centre, and more to fill a family day: more attractions, more park space and 2 theme parks within reach against 1.

Where they are alike

Neither city needs much transport once you arrive: the two have about the same number of notable places within walking distance of the centre, so a stay in the middle puts most of it on foot.

Both keep eating and museum-going close in as well. Restaurants cluster near the centre in each, with San Sebastian offering the wider range of kitchens, and both have UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, 3 for San Sebastian and 1 for Seville.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone whose trip is built around swimming should take San Sebastian. It has 10 beaches close at hand and a sea reaching 22°C in August, against Seville's 2 beaches and no month of sea that warm.

Families are better served in Seville: far more tourist attractions near the centre, more park space to break up a day, and 2 theme parks within reach against San Sebastian's 1.

Museum-goers and people who want evenings out will also prefer Seville, with far more museums and far more places to drink and dance, most of them close to the centre.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figures are identical here because they reflect one national price level, not either city, so the comparison on that axis tells you nothing about which trip costs less. The €122 a day sits beside both for the same reason: treat it as a country-wide estimate rather than a trait of San Sebastian or Seville.

San Sebastian's beach standing rests on a short season. The sea only passes 21°C in two months of the year, and rain falls in every month, so the coast is a summer proposition. Seville's year-round warmth cuts the other way, tipping into 36°C in high summer.

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
Seville
16
18
22
24
28
33
36
36
32
26
20
17
Sea temperature, °C
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Seville
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Seville
56
46
47
51
33
6
1
3
32
74
72
78
Daylight, hours per day
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Seville
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
San Sebastian
3
4
5
5
7
6
7
6
6
5
3
3
Seville
6
7
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
8
6
5

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). Seville: 1991-2020 normals, Sevilla / San Pablo (8.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

San Sebastian is at its best in July and August: highs of 22-23°C, the sea at 21-22°C, and its driest, warmest stretch of the year. Rain is the constant elsewhere, heaviest in November at 203mm, so a coastal week outside high summer is a gamble.

Seville's window is much wider, from spring through autumn. April and May give 24-28°C with 33-51mm of rain, and October works too. Midsummer is the exception, with highs near 36°C and next to no rain to break the heat.

Getting there

Flying fromSan SebastianSeville
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
2 h 25 m
€99-133
1 stop
SVQ · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
1 h 35 m
€111-178
1 stop
SVQ · 9 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
SVQ · 9 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
SVQ · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
SVQ · 9 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
3 h 10 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
2 h 20 m
€126-171
SVQ · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
2 h 50 m
€180-230
1 stop
SVQ · 9 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
SVQ · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
SVQ · 9 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
SVQ · 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 SebastianSeville
Official languageSpanishSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation6 m18 m
Main airportSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinationsSeville Airport (SVQ)9 km from centre93 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan SebastianSeville
City population189,866689,423
People per km²3,1184,896
Museums within 10 km1424
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre4552
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months–

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow San Sebastian or Seville 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. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.