VacationSelector

Portland or Seattle?

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

Your match

Portland
42
match

Wins on year-round weather and nightlife with your weighting.

Seattle
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

The verdict

Choose Portland if you want the warmer summer and a wider range of kitchens, with highs reaching 28°C in August and more protected land within day-trip range.

Choose Seattle if you want a compact centre where notable places cluster within walking distance, more to do with children close in, and a coastline with plenty of beaches nearby.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

PortlandSeattle
Beaches & swimming. Seattle leads by 60 points.60
PortlandSeattle
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km27100
Coast distance69 km1 km
Water distance—1 km
Places to eat. Seattle leads by 1 points.1
PortlandSeattle
Score7475
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0111,460
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4435
Museums & heritage. Seattle leads by 1 points.1
PortlandSeattle
Score3536
Museums within 10 km2328
Museums within 2 km of centre1517
Share of museums within 2 km %6561
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Portland leads by 1 points.1
PortlandSeattle
Score5857
Drinking venues within 4 km942873
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre518696
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5580
Nightclubs within 4 km3234
Nature & day trips. Seattle leads by 5 points.5
PortlandSeattle
Score3540
Protected land share 50 km %139
Landscape blanket share 50 km %30
Land share of disc %10080
Park area within 2 km37 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Seattle leads by 12 points.12
PortlandSeattle
Score3446
Tourist attractions within 2 km817
Park area within 2 km37 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Seattle leads by 17 points.17
PortlandSeattle
Score3552
Notable places within 2 km2976
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Portland and Seattle are level on 43.
PortlandSeattle
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Portland leads by 4 points.4
PortlandSeattle
Score6561
Monthly daytime high7.9 °C to 27.7 °C7.8 °C to 24.9 °C
Monthly rainfall13 mm to 145 mm15 mm to 160 mm
Dry months33
0255075100

Where they differ

Portland runs warmer, with highs of 8-28°C across the year against Seattle's 8-25°C, and 13% of the land around it is protected against 9% near Seattle, which shows in the day trips. It also has one more theme park within reach.

Seattle holds about three times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, so more of the trip is walkable. It has 100 beaches nearby against Portland's 27, and more attractions and park space near the centre too.

Where they are alike

Eating out is what both do best. Seattle has somewhat more restaurants near the centre, Portland a somewhat wider range of kitchens; either way you eat well without planning the trip around it.

Museums are moderate in both, and neither has a UNESCO-listed place within day-trip reach. Nightlife is similar in scale, though Seattle's bars and clubs sit mostly near the centre while Portland's are more spread out. Both get 3 months at 40mm of rain or less.

Which traveller are you?

Families lean Seattle, with more attractions and more park space near the centre, so days need less transport. Portland answers with 2 theme parks within reach against Seattle's 1, but they are trips out rather than walks.

A short city break on foot suits Seattle, where far more notable places sit within walking distance of the centre, and where the bars and clubs are mostly close in too.

Anyone building the trip around eating and getting out of town should take Portland: a wider range of kitchens, summers peaking at 28°C, and 13% of the surrounding land protected against 9%.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figure here is a national price level, identical for both cities by construction, so it says nothing about which of the two costs more. No daily budget figure exists for either, so no cost comparison is possible at all; work it out from your own accommodation and eating plans.

Sunshine is not recorded by any weather station near either city, so that side of the weather comparison is unmeasured and the monthly picture rests on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature. Seattle's 100 nearby beaches are shoreline rather than swimming: the sea peaks at 12°C in August, well short of comfortable bathing.

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
Portland
8
11
13
16
20
23
27
28
25
18
12
8
Seattle
8
10
12
15
19
21
25
25
22
15
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Portland
No coastline within reach
Seattle
8
8
8
9
10
11
12
12
11
10
9
9
Rainfall, mm
Portland
128
94
101
75
65
41
13
14
39
87
138
145
Seattle
147
96
106
81
48
37
15
25
41
99
160
147
Daylight, hours per day
Portland
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. Portland: 1991-2020 normals, Portland International Airport (9.8 km from centre). Seattle: 1991-2020 normals, Seattle-Tacoma Airport (17.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Portland is the better bet from June to September, when highs climb from 23°C to 28°C and July and August see only 13-14mm of rain. September still holds 25°C, so the usable stretch runs a month longer.

Seattle is at its best in July and August, at 25°C with 15-25mm of rain and sea near 12°C. Either side of that, rain builds towards 160mm at the year's wettest, so keep the visit inside summer.

Getting there

Flying fromPortlandSeattle
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
2 h 15 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
2 h 30 m
€111-203
SEA · 18 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
2 h 35 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
DenverDEN, APA
2 h 30 m
€167-182
PDX · 10 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 20 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
5 h 15 m
€300-424
SEA · 18 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 55 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
3 h 55 m
€257-317
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 45 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
3 h 50 m
€204-286
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
San FranciscoSFO
1 h 45 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
Las VegasLAS
2 h 5 m
€173-370
PDX · 10 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
9 h 55 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
GuadalajaraGDL
4 h 35 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
4 h 45 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

MeasurePortlandSeattle
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation152 m40 m
Main airportPortland International Airport (PDX)10 km from centre87 non-stop destinationsSeattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)18 km from centre135 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasurePortlandSeattle
City population652,503737,015
People per km²1,7361,996
Museums within 10 km1727
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre8278
Swim season, months above 21 °C–None

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Portland 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.