VacationSelector

Los Angeles or Seattle?

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, 1 point apart

Los Angeles
53
match

Wins on year-round weather and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Seattle
52
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

Los AngelesSeattle
Beaches & swimming. Seattle leads by 31 points.31
Los AngelesSeattle
Score2960
Beaches 25 km11
Beaches 10 km0100
Swim season months00
Warmest sea temp20.2 °C
Scoring variantbeachScoreWideRing
Declared2026-08-25
Registerseed/editorial-overrides.json
Coast distance1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Seattle leads by 9 points.9
Los AngelesSeattle
Score6675
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,3371,460
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2235
Museums & heritage. Los Angeles leads by 13 points.13
Los AngelesSeattle
Score4936
Museums within 10 km6928
Museums within 2 km of centre2317
Share of museums within 2 km %3361
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Seattle leads by 3 points.3
Los AngelesSeattle
Score5457
Drinking venues within 4 km660873
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre432696
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6580
Nightclubs within 4 km6434
Nature & day trips. Los Angeles leads by 22 points.22
Los AngelesSeattle
Score6240
Protected land share 50 km %269
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8080
Park area within 2 km20 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Seattle leads by 13 points.13
Los AngelesSeattle
Score3346
Tourist attractions within 2 km1117
Park area within 2 km20 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Los Angeles leads by 2 points.2
Los AngelesSeattle
Score5452
Notable places within 2 km8876
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Los Angeles and Seattle are level on 43.
Los AngelesSeattle
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Los Angeles leads by 26 points.26
Los AngelesSeattle
Score8761
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 24.7 °C7.8 °C to 24.9 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 76 mm15 mm to 160 mm
Dry months83
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
Los Angeles
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
24
22
19
Seattle
8
10
12
15
19
21
25
25
22
15
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Los Angeles
15
15
15
15
17
18
20
20
20
19
17
16
Seattle
8
8
8
9
10
11
12
12
11
10
9
9
Rainfall, mm
Los Angeles
73
76
44
16
7
2
1
0
3
13
21
57
Seattle
147
96
106
81
48
37
15
25
41
99
160
147
Daylight, hours per day
Los Angeles
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
10
10
Seattle
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Los Angeles: 1991-2020 normals, Los Angeles Airport (18.5 km from centre). Seattle: 1991-2020 normals, Seattle-Tacoma Airport (17.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLos AngelesSeattle
PhoenixPHX, AZA
1 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
San FranciscoSFO
1 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
Las VegasLAS
1 h 5 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
5 h 15 m
€300-424
SEA · 18 km
DenverDEN, APA
2 h 20 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
Salt Lake CitySLC
1 h 45 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 0 m
€785-892
1 stop
LAX · 19 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 0 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
GuadalajaraGDL
3 h 10 m
no fares
LAX · 19 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
16 h 25 m
€964-1015
LAX · 19 km
14 h 40 m
€1,006-1077
2 stops
SEA · 18 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

MeasureLos AngelesSeattle
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation106 m40 m
Main airportLos Angeles International Airport (LAX)19 km from centre180 non-stop destinationsSeattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)18 km from centre135 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLos AngelesSeattle
City population3,898,747737,015
People per km²2,9941,996
Museums within 10 km3827
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre4678
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Los Angeles or Seattle 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). 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.