VacationSelector

Kyoto or Seoul?

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

Your match

Kyoto
58
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Seoul
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on good for families and museums & heritage 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.

KyotoSeoul
Beaches & swimming. Kyoto leads by 2 points.2
KyotoSeoul
Score1715
Swim season months52
Beaches 10 km01
Coast distance47 km28 km
Water distance47 km28 km
Places to eat. Seoul leads by 1 points.1
KyotoSeoul
Score8485
Restaurants within 2 km of centre5,0233,559
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2232
Museums & heritage. Seoul leads by 11 points.11
KyotoSeoul
Score7283
Museums within 10 km132203
Museums within 2 km of centre5190
Share of museums within 2 km %3944
Unesco sites within 50 km45
Nightlife. Kyoto and Seoul are level on 80.
KyotoSeoul
Score8080
Drinking venues within 4 km3,2153,291
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,3631,630
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7350
Nightclubs within 4 km2629
Nature & day trips. Seoul leads by 10 points.10
KyotoSeoul
Score2232
Protected land share 50 km %21
Landscape blanket share 50 km %20
Land share of disc %10095
Park area within 2 km45 hectares126 hectares
Good for families. Seoul leads by 13 points.13
KyotoSeoul
Score6679
Tourist attractions within 2 km6262
Park area within 2 km45 hectares126 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km48
Sights concentration. Seoul leads by 7 points.7
KyotoSeoul
Score5259
Notable places within 2 km79118
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seoul leads by 2 points.2
KyotoSeoul
Score7072
Price level global62.459.4
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Kyoto leads by 1 points.1
KyotoSeoul
Score6261
Monthly daytime high8.6 °C to 32.4 °C2 °C to 30 °C
Monthly rainfall40 mm to 232 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
Kyoto
9
9
13
20
24
27
31
32
28
22
17
11
Seoul
2
5
11
18
24
28
29
30
26
20
12
4
Sea temperature, °C
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Seoul
6
4
5
8
12
17
21
24
23
20
15
10
Rainfall, mm
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
Seoul
18
28
38
70
104
138
422
390
156
49
50
20
Daylight, hours per day
Kyoto
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Seoul
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Kyoto
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5
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. Kyoto: 1971-2000 (sunshine 1991-2020) normals, Kyoto (3.2 km from centre). Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromKyotoSeoul
TokyoHND, NRT
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 39 km
2 h 5 m
€140-229
ICN · 49 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
2 h 10 m
€237-303
KIX · 81 km
1 h 40 m
€197-199
1 stop
ICN · 49 km
SapporoCTS, OKD
1 h 55 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
5 h 35 m
€288-317
KIX · 81 km
5 h 0 m
€176-202
ICN · 49 km
Hong KongHKG
3 h 35 m
€254-314
KIX · 81 km
3 h 5 m
€172-189
ICN · 49 km
OkinawaOKA
2 h 5 m
€120-154
KIX · 81 km
2 h 10 m
€202-249
ICN · 49 km
KaohsiungKHH
3 h 0 m
€181-306
KIX · 81 km
2 h 45 m
€202-230
GMP · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
11 h 10 m
€687-728
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
San FranciscoSFO
10 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
11 h 20 m
€560-734
ICN · 49 km
Abu DhabiAUH
9 h 40 m
€810-860
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
8 h 45 m
€591-679
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

MeasureKyotoSeoul
Official languageJapaneseKorean, Korean Sign Language
CurrencyYen (JPY)Won (KRW)
SocketsAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the regionCF220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+9UTC+9
Emergency numberPolice 110, fire 119Police 112, ambulance 119, fire 119
Elevation51 m38 m
Main airportKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinationsIncheon International Airport (ICN)49 km from centre161 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days18 days

By the numbers

MeasureKyotoSeoul
City population1,463,7239,668,465
People per km²1,76815,973
Museums within 10 km7680
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km45
Distinct cuisines in the centre89156
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Kyoto 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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). 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. 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.