VacationSelector

Philadelphia or Seattle?

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

Philadelphia
51
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Seattle
52
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

PhiladelphiaSeattle
Beaches & swimming. Seattle leads by 60 points.60
PhiladelphiaSeattle
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1100
Coast distance13 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Philadelphia leads by 2 points.2
PhiladelphiaSeattle
Score7775
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,7141,460
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3535
Museums & heritage. Philadelphia leads by 24 points.24
PhiladelphiaSeattle
Score6036
Museums within 10 km8928
Museums within 2 km of centre4817
Share of museums within 2 km %5461
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Philadelphia leads by 2 points.2
PhiladelphiaSeattle
Score5957
Drinking venues within 4 km930873
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre575696
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6280
Nightclubs within 4 km4134
Nature & day trips. Philadelphia leads by 9 points.9
PhiladelphiaSeattle
Score4940
Protected land share 50 km %149
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8980
Park area within 2 km75 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Philadelphia leads by 7 points.7
PhiladelphiaSeattle
Score5346
Tourist attractions within 2 km1617
Park area within 2 km75 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Philadelphia leads by 2 points.2
PhiladelphiaSeattle
Score5452
Notable places within 2 km8876
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Philadelphia and Seattle are level on 43.
PhiladelphiaSeattle
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Seattle leads by 1 points.1
PhiladelphiaSeattle
Score6061
Monthly daytime high5.2 °C to 31 °C7.8 °C to 24.9 °C
Monthly rainfall69 mm to 112 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
Philadelphia
5
7
12
18
24
28
31
30
26
20
13
8
Seattle
8
10
12
15
19
21
25
25
22
15
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Philadelphia
No coastline within reach
Seattle
8
8
8
9
10
11
12
12
11
10
9
9
Rainfall, mm
Philadelphia
79
69
101
88
86
103
111
109
112
88
74
101
Seattle
147
96
106
81
48
37
15
25
41
99
160
147
Daylight, hours per day
Philadelphia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Seattle
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Philadelphia
4
5
6
7
9
9
8
9
7
7
5
5
Seattle
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Philadelphia: 1991-2020 normals, Philadelphia International Airport (11.3 km from centre). Seattle: 1991-2020 normals, Seattle-Tacoma Airport (17.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromPhiladelphiaSeattle
DenverDEN, APA
3 h 35 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
1 h 55 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
3 h 55 m
€257-317
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
5 h 10 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
2 h 30 m
€111-203
SEA · 18 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
3 h 10 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
TokyoHND, NRT
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 140 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 10 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
3 h 50 m
€204-286
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
BostonBOS, PSM
1 h 10 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 20 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
GuadalajaraGDL
4 h 50 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
DohaDOH
13 h 30 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
14 h 40 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

MeasurePhiladelphiaSeattle
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)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
Elevation12 m40 m
Main airportPhiladelphia International Airport (PHL)11 km from centre128 non-stop destinationsSeattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)18 km from centre135 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasurePhiladelphiaSeattle
City population1,603,797737,015
People per km²4,3391,996
Museums within 10 km5427
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre7578
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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