VacationSelector

San Sebastian or Sydney?

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 value for money with your weighting.

Sydney
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on nightlife and good for families 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 SebastianSydney
Beaches & swimming. Sydney leads by 5 points.5
San SebastianSydney
Score5560
Swim season months26
Beaches 10 km10160
Coast distance0 km7 km
Water distance0 km7 km
Places to eat. Sydney leads by 23 points.23
San SebastianSydney
Score5578
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4722,205
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2631
Museums & heritage. Sydney leads by 12 points.12
San SebastianSydney
Score3951
Museums within 10 km1744
Museums within 2 km of centre720
Share of museums within 2 km %4145
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Sydney leads by 35 points.35
San SebastianSydney
Score4075
Drinking venues within 4 km3882,050
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre3381,405
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8769
Nightclubs within 4 km12120
Nature & day trips. Sydney leads by 2 points.2
San SebastianSydney
Score5658
Protected land share 50 km %1110
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5252
Park area within 2 km70 hectares115 hectares
Good for families. Sydney leads by 34 points.34
San SebastianSydney
Score3064
Tourist attractions within 2 km537
Park area within 2 km70 hectares115 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Sydney leads by 6 points.6
San SebastianSydney
Score5460
Notable places within 2 km89123
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 21 points.21
San SebastianSydney
Score7150
Price level global60.890.2
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Sydney leads by 23 points.23
San SebastianSydney
Score5881
Monthly daytime high11.2 °C to 22.9 °C17.7 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall92 mm to 203 mm55 mm to 121 mm
Dry months00
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
Sydney
28
27
26
23
21
18
18
19
22
24
25
26
Sea temperature, °C
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Sydney
23
23
23
22
21
20
19
18
18
19
20
21
Rainfall, mm
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Sydney
80
116
90
95
89
121
70
63
57
55
71
68
Daylight, hours per day
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sydney
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Sunshine, hours per day
San Sebastian
3
4
5
5
7
6
7
6
6
5
3
3
Sydney
8
6
7
7
7
6
7
8
8
8
7
8

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). Sydney: 1991-2020 normals, Sydney Airport (3.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan SebastianSydney
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
20 h 35 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
20 h 40 m
€931-1073
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 75 km
18 h 15 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 10 m
€77-99
BIO · 75 km
19 h 55 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
19 h 30 m
no fares
SYD · 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 SebastianSydney
Official languageSpanishEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Australian Dollar (AUD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzI230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+10, UTC+11 in summer
Emergency number112000
Elevation6 m6 m
Main airportSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinationsSydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (SYD)9 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan SebastianSydney
City population189,8665,450,496
People per km²3,118449
Museums within 10 km1438
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre4579
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months6 months

Where else could you go?

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