VacationSelector

Mexico City or Seoul?

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

Mexico City
62
match

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

Seoul
63
match

Wins on good for families 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.

Mexico CitySeoul
Beaches & swimming. Seoul leads by 15 points.15
Mexico CitySeoul
Score015
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km41
Coast distance247 km28 km
Water distance28 km
Places to eat. Seoul leads by 19 points.19
Mexico CitySeoul
Score6685
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,1793,559
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1532
Museums & heritage. Seoul leads by 4 points.4
Mexico CitySeoul
Score7983
Museums within 10 km138203
Museums within 2 km of centre6590
Share of museums within 2 km %4744
Unesco sites within 50 km65
Nightlife. Seoul leads by 2 points.2
Mexico CitySeoul
Score7880
Drinking venues within 4 km2,1563,291
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre9261,630
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4350
Nightclubs within 4 km19829
Nature & day trips. Mexico City leads by 31 points.31
Mexico CitySeoul
Score6332
Protected land share 50 km %301
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10095
Park area within 2 km32 hectares126 hectares
Good for families. Seoul leads by 29 points.29
Mexico CitySeoul
Score5079
Tourist attractions within 2 km2362
Park area within 2 km32 hectares126 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km48
Sights concentration. Seoul leads by 5 points.5
Mexico CitySeoul
Score5459
Notable places within 2 km88118
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Mexico City leads by 4 points.4
Mexico CitySeoul
Score7672
Price level global54.259.4
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Mexico City leads by 29 points.29
Mexico CitySeoul
Score9061
Monthly daytime high22.2 °C to 27.9 °C2 °C to 30 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 186 mm18 mm to 422 mm
Dry months64
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
Mexico City
22
25
26
28
27
26
25
25
24
23
23
22
Seoul
2
5
11
18
24
28
29
30
26
20
12
4
Sea temperature, °C
Mexico City
No coastline within reach
Seoul
6
4
5
8
12
17
21
24
23
20
15
10
Rainfall, mm
Mexico City
7
3
19
27
53
127
176
186
144
79
10
9
Seoul
18
28
38
70
104
138
422
390
156
49
50
20
Daylight, hours per day
Mexico City
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Seoul
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Mexico City
8
8
9
8
8
6
6
6
5
6
7
7
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. Mexico City: 1991-2020 normals, Mexico Central, D. F. (7.9 km from centre). Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMexico CitySeoul
TokyoHND, NRT
14 h 0 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
2 h 5 m
€140-229
ICN · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
4 h 40 m
€335-379
MEX · 7 km
13 h 45 m
€770-823
ICN · 49 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
3 h 35 m
€248-282
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
12 h 0 m
€637-697
ICN · 49 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
15 h 20 m
€1,089-1205
3 stops
MEX · 7 km
1 h 45 m
€198-221
ICN · 49 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
5 h 20 m
€321-367
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 50 m
€259-271
MEX · 7 km
13 h 5 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
BarcelonaBCN
11 h 50 m
€883-934
2 stops
MEX · 7 km
11 h 55 m
€680-750
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 25 m
€203-306
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
13 h 35 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
4 h 30 m
€367-420
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
13 h 10 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
17 h 30 m
€1,075-1211
2 stops
MEX · 7 km
8 h 35 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 2026-08 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

MeasureMexico CitySeoul
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec MayaKorean, Korean Sign Language
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)Won (KRW)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzCF220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6UTC+9
Emergency number911Police 112, ambulance 119, fire 119
Elevation2,240 m38 m
Main airportMexico City Benito Juárez International Airport (MEX)7 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsIncheon International Airport (ICN)49 km from centre161 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days18 days

By the numbers

MeasureMexico CitySeoul
City population9,209,9449,668,465
People per km²6,20215,973
Museums within 10 km10880
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km65
Distinct cuisines in the centre50156
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 Mexico City 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). 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.