Night-time safety · San Francisco · data through August 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 35% 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 reported incidents after dark

Neighborhood	6pm–6am	Share	Index
1 Tenderloin	3,872	44%	7/100
2 South of Market	2,618	45%	11/100
3 Nob Hill	2,352	44%	12/100
4 Mission	1,718	42%	14/100
5 Hayes Valley	1,040	44%	22/100
6 Financial District/South Beach	994	44%	24/100
7 Western Addition	940	47%	26/100
8 Chinatown	874	46%	27/100
9 Pacific Heights	727	51%	35/100
10 Japantown	710	47%	32/100
11 Castro/Upper Market	610	52%	37/100
12 Russian Hill	599	54%	38/100
13 Marina	489	57%	46/100
14 Bayview Hunters Point	471	48%	40/100
15 North Beach	434	52%	44/100
16 Mission Bay	426	42%	40/100
17 Lone Mountain/USF	371	48%	47/100
18 Haight Ashbury	363	45%	47/100
19 Bernal Heights	338	51%	50/100
20 Potrero Hill	334	48%	50/100
21 Outer Mission	275	40%	50/100
22 Noe Valley	270	48%	58/100
23 Presidio Heights	265	50%	59/100
24 Inner Richmond	253	49%	58/100
25 Excelsior	252	47%	55/100

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
Treasure Island	58%	82	88/100
Marina	57%	856	46/100
Russian Hill	54%	1,115	38/100
McLaren Park	53%	254	71/100
Outer Richmond	52%	328	68/100
Castro/Upper Market	52%	1,176	37/100
North Beach	52%	838	44/100
Pacific Heights	51%	1,412	35/100
Bernal Heights	51%	664	50/100
Presidio Heights	50%	531	59/100
Inner Richmond	49%	513	58/100
Lincoln Park	49%	145	84/100

Least night-weighted

Where what gets reported is most concentrated in daylight hours.

Neighborhood	Night share	Incidents
West of Twin Peaks	35%	182
Outer Mission	40%	681
Lakeshore	41%	398
Presidio	41%	6
Mission Bay	42%	1,016
Mission	42%	4,061
Visitacion Valley	43%	340
Hayes Valley	44%	2,378

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 35% 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 3,872 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?

Treasure Island 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 and check in on arrival.

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.