Route brief · SFO → BUD
San Francisco → Budapest
$1,572
round-trip · too little price history on this route to compare
Dec 18 – Jan 4 '27 · 17 nights
Air Canada2 stops
Cached fare — the booking search re-prices live before you pay.
Destination briefBUDBudapestThermal baths, ruin bars and a river splitting two cities — still the best value capital in Europe.Best windowApr–Jun · Sep–OctAirportsFerenc Liszt (BUD)All routes into BudapestWhen this route gets cheap.
Best time to be in Budapest: Apr–Jun · Sep–Oct. Fare history for this route is still thin, so we make no seasonal call yet.
The cheapest itinerary we are tracking makes 2 stops and takes about 14 hours outbound, on a 17-night trip — ticketed under Air Canada, which on a connecting fare need not operate every leg. At $1,572 for 9,791 km each way, that works out to about $80 per 1,000 km flown. That is above the $44 typical of long-haul fares here. Across the 15 departure cities we track at a similar distance from Budapest, this fare ranks 15th — 2.9× the $541 we hold from Seoul. For context, the middle fare among the 44 routes of similar length we watch out of San Francisco is $816. We have 1 month of cached prices for this route so far — not enough to call a fare cheap or expensive, so we publish the price without a percentage.
The one day we hold a cached fare for
Tap a date → live search
These are the only days we have a cached price for on this route so far — not the only days it flies. The search above covers any date.
Route facts
- Airports
- SFO · Oakland (OAK) · San José (SJC) ↔ Ferenc Liszt (BUD)
- Flight time
- ~14 hours outbound
- Distance
- ~9,791 km each way
- Airlines on the board
- Air Canada
- Itineraries
- Connections on current fares
- Best months to visit
- Apr–Jun · Sep–Oct
SF → BUD, answered.
How far in advance should I book SF → Budapest?
We do not publish a number for this, because we cannot measure it yet. Answering it honestly means watching the same departure date on this route over many weeks as it approaches, and that archive is still filling up — so any "book N days ahead" figure here would be borrowed from somewhere else rather than measured. See /guides/what-moves-a-flight-price/ for the levers we can measure.
Are there nonstop flights from San Francisco to Budapest?
The current cheapest fares involve a connection, ticketed under Air Canada. Nonstop options exist on many dates at higher prices — check the live search for your exact dates.
Are these prices guaranteed?
No — these are cached fares found on real searches (this one on August 23). Airlines reprice constantly, so the booking search re-checks the live price before you pay. Fresher finds are far more likely to still be available.
Next step
Sleeping in Budapest?
Lock the flight first — then compare stays for Dec 18 – Jan 4 '27 · 17 nights.
Browse hotels ↗
Missed it?
Cached fares expire. This route has a feed of its own — follow it and the next SF → BUD drop reaches you as soon as we find it.
Follow SF → BUD