VacationSelector

San Sebastian or Zurich?

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 value for money with your weighting.

Zurich
44
match

Wins on museums & heritage 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 SebastianZurich
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 55 points.55
San SebastianZurich
Score550
Swim season months20
Beaches 10 km1023
Coast distance0 km632 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Zurich leads by 12 points.12
San SebastianZurich
Score5567
Restaurants within 2 km of centre472974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2630
Museums & heritage. Zurich leads by 17 points.17
San SebastianZurich
Score3956
Museums within 10 km1776
Museums within 2 km of centre737
Share of museums within 2 km %4149
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Zurich leads by 14 points.14
San SebastianZurich
Score4054
Drinking venues within 4 km388676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre338553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8782
Nightclubs within 4 km1274
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 19 points.19
San SebastianZurich
Score5637
Protected land share 50 km %1116
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %52100
Park area within 2 km70 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Zurich leads by 6 points.6
San SebastianZurich
Score3036
Tourist attractions within 2 km58
Park area within 2 km70 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Zurich leads by 5 points.5
San SebastianZurich
Score5459
Notable places within 2 km89119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 36 points.36
San SebastianZurich
Score7135
Price level global60.8110.5
Daily budget€122€248
Year-round weather. San Sebastian leads by 5 points.5
San SebastianZurich
Score5853
Monthly daytime high11.2 °C to 22.9 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall92 mm to 203 mm60 mm to 128 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
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zurich
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
Zurich
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1

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). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan SebastianZurich
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
1 h 50 m
€84-103
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
BSL · 81 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 SebastianZurich
Official languageSpanishFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation6 m408 m
Main airportSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan SebastianZurich
City population189,866452,421
People per km²3,1185,147
Museums within 10 km1463
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre4578
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 Zurich 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.