VacationSelector

Budapest or Seoul?

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

Your match

Budapest
60
match

Wins on sights concentration and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Seoul
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on museums & heritage and beaches & swimming 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.

BudapestSeoul
Beaches & swimming. Seoul leads by 15 points.15
BudapestSeoul
Score015
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km61
Coast distance10,000 km28 km
Water distance28 km
Places to eat. Seoul leads by 8 points.8
BudapestSeoul
Score7785
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,6993,559
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3532
Museums & heritage. Seoul leads by 19 points.19
BudapestSeoul
Score6483
Museums within 10 km144203
Museums within 2 km of centre6490
Share of museums within 2 km %4444
Unesco sites within 50 km15
Nightlife. Seoul leads by 8 points.8
BudapestSeoul
Score7280
Drinking venues within 4 km1,7653,291
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,1681,630
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6650
Nightclubs within 4 km9729
Nature & day trips. Budapest leads by 8 points.8
BudapestSeoul
Score4032
Protected land share 50 km %81
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10095
Park area within 2 km111 hectares126 hectares
Good for families. Seoul leads by 8 points.8
BudapestSeoul
Score7179
Tourist attractions within 2 km7562
Park area within 2 km111 hectares126 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km18
Sights concentration. Budapest leads by 10 points.10
BudapestSeoul
Score6959
Notable places within 2 km206118
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Budapest leads by 8 points.8
BudapestSeoul
Score8072
Price level global4859.4
Daily budget€104
Year-round weather. Budapest leads by 3 points.3
BudapestSeoul
Score6461
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 27.9 °C2 °C to 30 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 75 mm18 mm to 422 mm
Dry months54
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
Budapest
4
7
11
17
22
26
27
28
22
16
9
4
Seoul
2
5
11
18
24
28
29
30
26
20
12
4
Sea temperature, °C
Budapest
No coastline within reach
Seoul
6
4
5
8
12
17
21
24
23
20
15
10
Rainfall, mm
Budapest
29
27
30
37
67
67
75
60
48
41
48
39
Seoul
18
28
38
70
104
138
422
390
156
49
50
20
Daylight, hours per day
Budapest
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Seoul
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Budapest
2
4
5
7
9
9
10
9
7
5
3
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. Budapest: 1991-2020 normals, Budapest Met Center (2.1 km from centre). Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBudapestSeoul
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€63-91
BUD · 18 km
11 h 5 m
€603-659
1 stop
ICN · 49 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 50 m
€87-214
BUD · 18 km
10 h 0 m
€493-591
ICN · 49 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 10 m
€97-114
BUD · 18 km
11 h 10 m
€687-728
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 40 m
€123-153
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
10 h 45 m
€646-685
ICN · 49 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 40 m
€52-62
BUD · 18 km
11 h 15 m
€632-735
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 40 m
€42-56
BUD · 18 km
11 h 5 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 25 m
€93-118
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
11 h 55 m
€680-750
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
10 h 30 m
€698-839
3 stops
BUD · 18 km
1 h 40 m
€197-199
1 stop
ICN · 49 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 25 m
€276-394
2 stops
BUD · 18 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
9 h 5 m
no fares
BUD · 18 km
13 h 10 m
no fares
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 2026-09 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

MeasureBudapestSeoul
Official languageHungarianKorean, Korean Sign Language
CurrencyForint (HUF)Won (KRW)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number112Police 112, ambulance 119, fire 119
Elevation117 m38 m
Main airportBudapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport (BUD)18 km from centre155 non-stop destinationsIncheon International Airport (ICN)49 km from centre161 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days18 days

By the numbers

MeasureBudapestSeoul
City population1,685,2099,668,465
People per km²3,20915,973
Museums within 10 km8180
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km15
Distinct cuisines in the centre86156
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 Budapest 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. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.