VacationSelector

Lucerne or Seattle?

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

Your match

Lucerne
33
match

Wins on museums & heritage with your weighting.

Seattle
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife 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.

LucerneSeattle
Beaches & swimming. Seattle leads by 60 points.60
LucerneSeattle
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km16100
Coast distance669 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Seattle leads by 28 points.28
LucerneSeattle
Score4775
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2691,460
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2535
Museums & heritage. Lucerne leads by 4 points.4
LucerneSeattle
Score4036
Museums within 10 km2328
Museums within 2 km of centre1317
Share of museums within 2 km %5761
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Seattle leads by 29 points.29
LucerneSeattle
Score2857
Drinking venues within 4 km202873
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre151696
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7580
Nightclubs within 4 km1134
Nature & day trips. Seattle leads by 15 points.15
LucerneSeattle
Score2540
Protected land share 50 km %79
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10080
Park area within 2 km29 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Seattle leads by 8 points.8
LucerneSeattle
Score3846
Tourist attractions within 2 km1517
Park area within 2 km29 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Seattle leads by 17 points.17
LucerneSeattle
Score3552
Notable places within 2 km2976
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seattle leads by 8 points.8
LucerneSeattle
Score3543
Price level global110.5100
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. Seattle leads by 8 points.8
LucerneSeattle
Score5361
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 24.3 °C7.8 °C to 24.9 °C
Monthly rainfall60 mm to 128 mm15 mm to 160 mm
Dry months03
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
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Seattle
8
10
12
15
19
21
25
25
22
15
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
Seattle
8
8
8
9
10
11
12
12
11
10
9
9
Rainfall, mm
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Seattle
147
96
106
81
48
37
15
25
41
99
160
147
Daylight, hours per day
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Seattle
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1
Seattle
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre). Seattle: 1991-2020 normals, Seattle-Tacoma Airport (17.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLucerneSeattle
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
5 h 15 m
€300-424
SEA · 18 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 30 m
€111-203
SEA · 18 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
9 h 5 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
3 h 55 m
€257-317
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
10 h 20 m
€554-583
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
San FranciscoSFO
11 h 40 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
14 h 40 m
€1,006-1077
2 stops
SEA · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 49 km
12 h 10 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
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 2026-08 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

MeasureLucerneSeattle
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation436 m40 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsSeattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)18 km from centre135 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLucerneSeattle
City population86,234737,015
People per km²2,9631,996
Museums within 10 km1427
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre4678
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lucerne 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. 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.