VacationSelector

Manila or Seoul?

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

Your match

Manila
60
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Seoul
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on museums & heritage and places to eat 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.

ManilaSeoul
Beaches & swimming. Manila leads by 61 points.61
ManilaSeoul
Score7615
Swim season months122
Beaches 10 km31
Coast distance2 km28 km
Water distance2 km28 km
Places to eat. Seoul leads by 27 points.27
ManilaSeoul
Score5885
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0153,559
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1732
Museums & heritage. Seoul leads by 33 points.33
ManilaSeoul
Score5083
Museums within 10 km77203
Museums within 2 km of centre2390
Share of museums within 2 km %3044
Unesco sites within 50 km15
Nightlife. Seoul leads by 19 points.19
ManilaSeoul
Score6180
Drinking venues within 4 km1,0823,291
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre3741,630
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3550
Nightclubs within 4 km3629
Nature & day trips. Seoul leads by 3 points.3
ManilaSeoul
Score2932
Protected land share 50 km %41
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7895
Park area within 2 km54 hectares126 hectares
Good for families. Seoul leads by 19 points.19
ManilaSeoul
Score6079
Tourist attractions within 2 km3762
Park area within 2 km54 hectares126 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km38
Sights concentration. Seoul leads by 7 points.7
ManilaSeoul
Score5259
Notable places within 2 km79118
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Manila leads by 18 points.18
ManilaSeoul
Score9072
Price level global33.759.4
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Manila and Seoul are level on 61.
ManilaSeoul
Score6161
Monthly daytime high30.5 °C to 34.6 °C2 °C to 30 °C
Monthly rainfall24 mm to 564 mm18 mm to 422 mm
Dry months44
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
Manila
31
31
33
35
34
33
32
31
31
32
31
31
Seoul
2
5
11
18
24
28
29
30
26
20
12
4
Sea temperature, °C
Manila
27
27
28
29
30
30
29
29
29
29
28
28
Seoul
6
4
5
8
12
17
21
24
23
20
15
10
Rainfall, mm
Manila
26
24
40
36
220
314
487
564
509
297
152
109
Seoul
18
28
38
70
104
138
422
390
156
49
50
20
Daylight, hours per day
Manila
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
Seoul
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Manila
No sunshine record
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. Manila: 1991-2020 normals, Science Garden (6 km from centre). Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromManilaSeoul
TokyoHND, NRT
4 h 10 m
€304-317
MNL · 11 km
2 h 5 m
€140-229
ICN · 49 km
OsakaKIX, ITM, UKB
3 h 45 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
1 h 40 m
€139-234
ICN · 49 km
Hong KongHKG
2 h 0 m
€128-135
MNL · 11 km
3 h 5 m
€172-189
ICN · 49 km
Da NangDAD
2 h 20 m
€165-192
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
4 h 10 m
€131-144
ICN · 49 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
3 h 15 m
€205-213
MNL · 11 km
5 h 0 m
€176-202
ICN · 49 km
HanoiHAN
2 h 45 m
€182-214
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
3 h 50 m
€152-181
ICN · 49 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
2 h 50 m
€210-218
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
1 h 40 m
€197-199
1 stop
ICN · 49 km
San FranciscoSFO
13 h 55 m
€628-629
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
11 h 20 m
€560-734
ICN · 49 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
13 h 20 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
11 h 10 m
€687-728
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
Abu DhabiAUH
8 h 55 m
no fares
MNL · 11 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 2026-09 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

MeasureManilaSeoul
Official languageEnglish, Filipino, TaglishKorean, Korean Sign Language
CurrencyPhilippine Peso (PHP)Won (KRW)
SocketsABC220 V, 60 HzCF220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+9
Emergency number911Police 112, ambulance 119, fire 119
Elevation9 m38 m
Main airportNinoy Aquino International Airport (MNL)11 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsIncheon International Airport (ICN)49 km from centre161 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year18 days18 days

By the numbers

MeasureManilaSeoul
City population1,902,5909,668,465
People per km²76,10415,973
Museums within 10 km2780
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km15
Distinct cuisines in the centre39156
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months2 months

Where else could you go?

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