VacationSelector

Ottawa or Seattle?

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

Your match

Ottawa
43
match

Wins on value for money and nature & day trips 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.

OttawaSeattle
Beaches & swimming. Seattle leads by 60 points.60
OttawaSeattle
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km9100
Coast distance423 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Seattle leads by 11 points.11
OttawaSeattle
Score6475
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6841,460
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3435
Museums & heritage. Seattle leads by 4 points.4
OttawaSeattle
Score3236
Museums within 10 km1528
Museums within 2 km of centre817
Share of museums within 2 km %5361
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Seattle leads by 13 points.13
OttawaSeattle
Score4457
Drinking venues within 4 km432873
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre303696
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7080
Nightclubs within 4 km3534
Nature & day trips. Ottawa leads by 1 points.1
OttawaSeattle
Score4140
Protected land share 50 km %89
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10080
Park area within 2 km122 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Ottawa and Seattle are level on 46.
OttawaSeattle
Score4646
Tourist attractions within 2 km1117
Park area within 2 km122 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Seattle leads by 2 points.2
OttawaSeattle
Score5052
Notable places within 2 km7176
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Ottawa leads by 11 points.11
OttawaSeattle
Score5443
Price level global84100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Seattle leads by 8 points.8
OttawaSeattle
Score5361
Monthly daytime high-4.9 °C to 27 °C7.8 °C to 24.9 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 94 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
Ottawa
-5
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
14
6
-2
Seattle
8
10
12
15
19
21
25
25
22
15
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Ottawa
No coastline within reach
Seattle
8
8
8
9
10
11
12
12
11
10
9
9
Rainfall, mm
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
Seattle
147
96
106
81
48
37
15
25
41
99
160
147
Daylight, hours per day
Ottawa
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
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. Ottawa: 1991-2020 normals, Ottawa CDA RCS (5.3 km from centre). Seattle: 1991-2020 normals, Seattle-Tacoma Airport (17.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromOttawaSeattle
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
4 h 35 m
€325-346
2 stops
SEA · 18 km
CancunCUN
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
5 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
CalgaryYYC
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
5 h 15 m
€300-424
SEA · 18 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
1 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
3 h 55 m
€257-317
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
50 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
5 h 0 m
no fares
YYJ · 142 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
4 h 35 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
4 h 50 m
€175-263
2 stops
YOW · 12 km
55 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
1 h 30 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
5 h 0 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

MeasureOttawaSeattle
Official languageFrench, English
CurrencyCanadian Dollar (CAD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation70 m40 m
Main airportOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinationsSeattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)18 km from centre135 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureOttawaSeattle
City population1,017,449737,015
People per km²3661,996
Museums within 10 km2027
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre6278
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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