VacationSelector

Osaka 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, 2 points apart

Osaka
65
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife with your weighting.

Seoul
63
match

Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration 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.

OsakaSeoul
Beaches & swimming. Osaka leads by 40 points.40
OsakaSeoul
Score5515
Swim season months52
Beaches 10 km251
Coast distance7 km28 km
Water distance7 km28 km
Places to eat. Osaka leads by 5 points.5
OsakaSeoul
Score9085
Restaurants within 2 km of centre9,1343,559
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2532
Museums & heritage. Seoul leads by 19 points.19
OsakaSeoul
Score6483
Museums within 10 km78203
Museums within 2 km of centre2290
Share of museums within 2 km %2844
Unesco sites within 50 km65
Nightlife. Osaka leads by 17 points.17
OsakaSeoul
Score9780
Drinking venues within 4 km8,4733,291
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre4,4921,630
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5350
Nightclubs within 4 km9729
Nature & day trips. Seoul leads by 4 points.4
OsakaSeoul
Score2832
Protected land share 50 km %11
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %8495
Park area within 2 km88 hectares126 hectares
Good for families. Seoul leads by 7 points.7
OsakaSeoul
Score7279
Tourist attractions within 2 km4762
Park area within 2 km88 hectares126 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km78
Sights concentration. Seoul leads by 11 points.11
OsakaSeoul
Score4859
Notable places within 2 km63118
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seoul leads by 2 points.2
OsakaSeoul
Score7072
Price level global62.459.4
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Osaka leads by 2 points.2
OsakaSeoul
Score6361
Monthly daytime high9.7 °C to 33.6 °C2 °C to 30 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 185 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
Osaka
10
11
14
20
25
28
32
34
30
24
18
12
Seoul
2
5
11
18
24
28
29
30
26
20
12
4
Sea temperature, °C
Osaka
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
Osaka
47
61
103
103
136
185
175
113
146
140
73
56
Seoul
18
28
38
70
104
138
422
390
156
49
50
20
Daylight, hours per day
Osaka
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Seoul
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Osaka
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. Osaka: 1991-2020 normals, Osaka (1.8 km from centre). Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromOsakaSeoul
TokyoHND, NRT
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 11 km
2 h 5 m
€140-229
ICN · 49 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
2 h 10 m
€237-303
KIX · 38 km
1 h 40 m
€197-199
1 stop
ICN · 49 km
SapporoCTS, OKD
1 h 55 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
5 h 35 m
€288-317
KIX · 38 km
5 h 0 m
€176-202
ICN · 49 km
Hong KongHKG
3 h 35 m
€254-314
KIX · 38 km
3 h 5 m
€172-189
ICN · 49 km
OkinawaOKA
2 h 5 m
€120-154
KIX · 38 km
2 h 10 m
€202-249
ICN · 49 km
KaohsiungKHH
3 h 0 m
€181-306
KIX · 38 km
2 h 45 m
€202-230
GMP · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 38 km
11 h 10 m
€687-728
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
San FranciscoSFO
10 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
11 h 20 m
€560-734
ICN · 49 km
Abu DhabiAUH
9 h 40 m
€810-860
3 stops
KIX · 38 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

MeasureOsakaSeoul
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
Elevation20 m38 m
Main airportKansai International Airport (KIX)38 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

MeasureOsakaSeoul
City population2,751,8629,668,465
People per km²12,34015,973
Museums within 10 km4380
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km65
Distinct cuisines in the centre97156
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 Osaka 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.