VacationSelector

San Sebastian or York?

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

York
41
match

Wins on good for families 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 SebastianYork
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 55 points.55
San SebastianYork
Score550
Swim season months20
Beaches 10 km102
Coast distance0 km50 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. San Sebastian leads by 1 points.1
San SebastianYork
Score5554
Restaurants within 2 km of centre472361
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2631
Museums & heritage. York leads by 7 points.7
San SebastianYork
Score3946
Museums within 10 km1718
Museums within 2 km of centre716
Share of museums within 2 km %4189
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. York leads by 3 points.3
San SebastianYork
Score4043
Drinking venues within 4 km388450
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre338353
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8778
Nightclubs within 4 km1214
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 23 points.23
San SebastianYork
Score5633
Protected land share 50 km %1117
Landscape blanket share 50 km %016
Land share of disc %5295
Park area within 2 km70 hectares42 hectares
Good for families. York leads by 13 points.13
San SebastianYork
Score3043
Tourist attractions within 2 km513
Park area within 2 km70 hectares42 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 15 points.15
San SebastianYork
Score5439
Notable places within 2 km8937
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 17 points.17
San SebastianYork
Score7154
Price level global60.884.9
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. San Sebastian leads by 2 points.2
San SebastianYork
Score5856
Monthly daytime high11.2 °C to 22.9 °C6.7 °C to 20.9 °C
Monthly rainfall92 mm to 203 mm39 mm to 66 mm
Dry months01
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
York
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
20
18
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
York
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
York
53
44
39
48
43
61
56
65
58
66
62
60
Daylight, hours per day
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
York
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
San Sebastian
3
4
5
5
7
6
7
6
6
5
3
3
York
2
3
4
5
6
5
6
5
4
3
2
2

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). York: 1991-2020 normals, Leeming (47.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan SebastianYork
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
3 h 10 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
4 h 20 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
AlicanteALC
1 h 20 m
€81-137
BIO · 75 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
3 h 40 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
7 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 104 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 SebastianYork
Official languageSpanishEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation6 m25 m
Main airportSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinationsLeeds Bradford Airport (LBA)39 km from centre73 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan SebastianYork
City population189,866208,400
People per km²3,118766
Museums within 10 km1424
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre4554
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 York 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.