VacationSelector

San Sebastian or Sorrento?

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

Your match

San Sebastian
✓ Best match
51
match

Wins on sights concentration and places to eat with your weighting.

Sorrento
37
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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 SebastianSorrento
Beaches & swimming. Sorrento leads by 22 points.22
San SebastianSorrento
Score5577
Swim season months25
Beaches 10 km1078
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. San Sebastian leads by 36 points.36
San SebastianSorrento
Score5519
Restaurants within 2 km of centre472249
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km265
Museums & heritage. San Sebastian leads by 2 points.2
San SebastianSorrento
Score3937
Museums within 10 km177
Museums within 2 km of centre74
Share of museums within 2 km %4157
Unesco sites within 50 km35
Nightlife. San Sebastian leads by 18 points.18
San SebastianSorrento
Score4022
Drinking venues within 4 km388179
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre338131
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8773
Nightclubs within 4 km122
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 33 points.33
San SebastianSorrento
Score5623
Protected land share 50 km %117
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5242
Park area within 2 km70 hectares4 hectares
Good for families. San Sebastian leads by 25 points.25
San SebastianSorrento
Score305
Tourist attractions within 2 km52
Park area within 2 km70 hectares4 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 44 points.44
San SebastianSorrento
Score5410
Notable places within 2 km897
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 3 points.3
San SebastianSorrento
Score7168
Price level global60.864.9
Daily budget€122€155
Year-round weather. Sorrento leads by 15 points.15
San SebastianSorrento
Score5873
Monthly daytime high11.2 °C to 22.9 °C13.1 °C to 31.4 °C
Monthly rainfall92 mm to 203 mm17 mm to 159 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
Sorrento
13
14
16
19
24
28
31
31
28
23
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Sorrento
15
14
14
16
19
23
25
26
24
22
19
17
Rainfall, mm
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Sorrento
89
69
82
73
54
29
17
18
78
92
159
108
Daylight, hours per day
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sorrento
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
San Sebastian
3
4
5
5
7
6
7
6
6
5
3
3
Sorrento
4
5
6
7
8
9
11
10
8
6
4
4

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). Sorrento: 1991-2020 normals, Grazzanise (53.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan SebastianSorrento
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
2 h 10 m
€108-170
NAP · 30 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 50 m
€79-101
BIO · 75 km
1 h 30 m
€35-109
NAP · 30 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
2 h 35 m
€90-167
1 stop
NAP · 30 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
1 h 40 m
€157-224
1 stop
NAP · 30 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
2 h 25 m
€163-210
1 stop
NAP · 30 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
2 h 0 m
€132-252
1 stop
NAP · 30 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
NAP · 30 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
NAP · 30 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
NAP · 30 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
NAP · 30 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 SebastianSorrento
Official languageSpanishItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation6 m50 m
Main airportSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinationsNaples International Airport (NAP)30 km from centre131 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan SebastianSorrento
City population189,86615,407
People per km²3,1181,541
Museums within 10 km145
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km35
Distinct cuisines in the centre4511
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow San Sebastian or Sorrento 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.