VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Seoul?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Amsterdam
65
match

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

Seoul
63
match

Wins on value for money and good for families 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.

AmsterdamSeoul
Beaches & swimming. Amsterdam leads by 25 points.25
AmsterdamSeoul
Score4015
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km331
Coast distance24 km28 km
Water distance24 km28 km
Places to eat. Seoul leads by 2 points.2
AmsterdamSeoul
Score8385
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,9573,559
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4432
Museums & heritage. Seoul leads by 3 points.3
AmsterdamSeoul
Score8083
Museums within 10 km98203
Museums within 2 km of centre6990
Share of museums within 2 km %7044
Unesco sites within 50 km55
Nightlife. Seoul leads by 10 points.10
AmsterdamSeoul
Score7080
Drinking venues within 4 km1,5433,291
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,0781,630
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7050
Nightclubs within 4 km11429
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 28 points.28
AmsterdamSeoul
Score6032
Protected land share 50 km %211
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8295
Park area within 2 km49 hectares126 hectares
Good for families. Seoul leads by 11 points.11
AmsterdamSeoul
Score6879
Tourist attractions within 2 km7462
Park area within 2 km49 hectares126 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km38
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 9 points.9
AmsterdamSeoul
Score6859
Notable places within 2 km196118
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seoul leads by 14 points.14
AmsterdamSeoul
Score5872
Price level global79.259.4
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. Seoul leads by 4 points.4
AmsterdamSeoul
Score5761
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C2 °C to 30 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm18 mm to 422 mm
Dry months04
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
Amsterdam
6
7
11
15
18
21
23
23
20
15
10
7
Seoul
2
5
11
18
24
28
29
30
26
20
12
4
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Seoul
6
4
5
8
12
17
21
24
23
20
15
10
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Seoul
18
28
38
70
104
138
422
390
156
49
50
20
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Seoul
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Seoul
5
5
6
7
7
6
4
5
6
7
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Amsterdam: 1991-2020 normals, De Bilt (35.3 km from centre). Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamSeoul
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
11 h 5 m
€603-659
1 stop
ICN · 49 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 40 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
2 h 5 m
€140-229
ICN · 49 km
OsakaKIX, ITM, UKB
11 h 30 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 40 m
€139-234
ICN · 49 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
11 h 55 m
€680-750
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 15 m
€166-175
AMS · 12 km
10 h 0 m
€493-591
ICN · 49 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 12 km
11 h 10 m
€687-728
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 40 m
€197-199
1 stop
ICN · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
13 h 45 m
€770-823
ICN · 49 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
11 h 30 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
14 h 55 m
€1,052-1072
2 stops
ICN · 49 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

MeasureAmsterdamSeoul
Official languageDutchKorean, Korean Sign Language
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Won (KRW)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number112 or 911Police 112, ambulance 119, fire 119
Elevation-2 m38 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsIncheon International Airport (ICN)49 km from centre161 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days18 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamSeoul
City population921,4689,668,465
People per km²4,20815,973
Museums within 10 km10180
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km55
Distinct cuisines in the centre98156
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Amsterdam or Seoul 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.