Night-time safety · San Francisco · data through November 2026

Is San Francisco safe at night?

46% of San Francisco's reported incidents happen between 6pm and 6am, and 19% of them fall between midnight and 6am. That share swings from 37% to 58% depending on which neighborhood you are in — which is the whole point: the question worth asking is not whether San Francisco is safe after dark, but where and by which route.

These figures describe when reported incidents happen, not how dangerous a street is. Somewhere with a night-time crowd reports more after dark because more people are there — that is a fact about footfall as much as about risk, and it is why the tables below show the count and the share side by side.

Most reported incidents after dark

Neighborhood	6pm–6am	Share	Index
1 Tenderloin	5,105	44%	7/100
2 South of Market	3,659	45%	10/100
3 Nob Hill	2,975	44%	11/100
4 Mission	2,325	44%	13/100
5 Financial District/South Beach	1,423	42%	22/100
6 Hayes Valley	1,299	44%	22/100
7 Western Addition	1,190	47%	26/100
8 Chinatown	1,119	46%	26/100
9 Pacific Heights	913	52%	35/100
10 Japantown	890	47%	32/100
11 Castro/Upper Market	757	52%	37/100
12 Russian Hill	748	53%	38/100
13 Marina	615	58%	46/100
14 Mission Bay	601	42%	38/100
15 Bayview Hunters Point	593	48%	40/100
16 North Beach	562	53%	43/100
17 Haight Ashbury	462	46%	46/100
18 Lone Mountain/USF	451	47%	48/100
19 Bernal Heights	420	51%	50/100
20 Potrero Hill	418	46%	50/100
21 Outer Mission	362	43%	51/100
22 Noe Valley	333	48%	59/100
23 Excelsior	331	48%	55/100
24 Presidio Heights	328	49%	59/100
25 Portola	325	47%	58/100

Changes most after dark

Ranked by the share of reported incidents that fall between 6pm and 6am, against a San Francisco median of 47%. A high share is not a high total — a quiet neighborhood whose few incidents mostly happen at night sits near the top — so the count is shown beside it.

Neighborhood	Night share	Incidents	Index
Marina	58%	1,058	46/100
McLaren Park	56%	312	72/100
Russian Hill	53%	1,403	38/100
North Beach	53%	1,067	43/100
Treasure Island	53%	103	88/100
Castro/Upper Market	52%	1,447	37/100
Pacific Heights	52%	1,763	35/100
Bernal Heights	51%	829	50/100
Outer Richmond	50%	422	68/100
Inner Richmond	50%	649	58/100
Presidio Heights	49%	665	59/100
Oceanview/Merced/Ingleside	49%	543	63/100

Least night-weighted

Where what gets reported is most concentrated in daylight hours.

Neighborhood	Night share	Incidents
West of Twin Peaks	37%	248
Presidio	41%	6
Financial District/South Beach	42%	3,393
Mission Bay	42%	1,430
Lakeshore	42%	498
Outer Mission	43%	847
Hayes Valley	44%	2,969
Mission	44%	5,312

Common questions

Is San Francisco safe to walk at night?

46% of San Francisco's reported incidents happen between 6pm and 6am, and 19% fall in the small hours between midnight and 6am. That is a description of when incidents are reported, not a verdict on the city: the figure varies far more between neighborhoods than it does between cities, from 37% to 58% here. The useful question is which neighborhood and which route, not whether a whole city is safe.

Which neighborhood in San Francisco has the most reported crime at night?

Tenderloin, with roughly 5,105 reported incidents between 6pm and 6am — 44% of its total. Somewhere busy usually tops this list because more people are out, so read it alongside the daytime picture on its own page rather than on its own.

Which neighborhood changes most after dark?

Marina is the most night-concentrated in San Francisco: 58% of what is reported there happens between 6pm and 6am, against a San Francisco median of 47%. A high share does not mean a high total — a quiet neighborhood whose few incidents mostly happen at night will rank high here — which is why the table shows the count beside it.

How does SafeRoute use this at night?

The app scores each walking route against the same SFPD data, and can weight it toward the time you are actually walking rather than a flat all-day average. It also shows how much of each route runs on lit streets, and lets you share a walk.

Methodology

Every incident reported to the SFPD carries an occurrence time, which is bucketed into daytime (6am–6pm), evening (6pm–midnight) and the small hours (midnight–6am), split weekday against weekend, and weighted by severity so violence counts for more than shoplifting. A neighborhood's night share is the weighted proportion falling between 6pm and 6am; its night count is that share applied to its total. The city-wide chart weights each neighborhood by its own volume, so a busy centre is not averaged against a quiet suburb as though they were the same size.

Each incident reported to the SFPD (via DataSF) is weighted by severity — violence counts for more than shoplifting. For every neighborhood we sum weighted incidents within 1 km of its center, and normalize against citywide crime rates onto a 0–100 index, higher = safer. Boundaries are DataSF's 41 Analysis Neighborhoods, the same unit SFPD tags each report with. Because San Francisco's dense downtown far outweighs its residential west side, the index is calibrated to the citywide median so a typical neighborhood reads mid-scale. Time-of-day charts use SFPD incident timestamps, severity-weighted. Pages regenerate as new data is published.