VacationSelector

San Francisco 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

San Francisco
62
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Seoul
63
match

Wins on museums & heritage and value for money 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.

San FranciscoSeoul
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 45 points.45
San FranciscoSeoul
Score6015
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km441
Coast distance2 km28 km
Water distance2 km28 km
Places to eat. Seoul leads by 2 points.2
San FranciscoSeoul
Score8385
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,3593,559
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3932
Museums & heritage. Seoul leads by 39 points.39
San FranciscoSeoul
Score4483
Museums within 10 km57203
Museums within 2 km of centre2990
Share of museums within 2 km %5144
Unesco sites within 50 km05
Nightlife. Seoul leads by 12 points.12
San FranciscoSeoul
Score6880
Drinking venues within 4 km1,4343,291
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre9281,630
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6550
Nightclubs within 4 km9729
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 28 points.28
San FranciscoSeoul
Score6032
Protected land share 50 km %171
Landscape blanket share 50 km %40
Land share of disc %5795
Park area within 2 km45 hectares126 hectares
Good for families. Seoul leads by 22 points.22
San FranciscoSeoul
Score5779
Tourist attractions within 2 km4862
Park area within 2 km45 hectares126 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km18
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 4 points.4
San FranciscoSeoul
Score6359
Notable places within 2 km147118
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seoul leads by 29 points.29
San FranciscoSeoul
Score4372
Price level global10059.4
Daily budget
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 17 points.17
San FranciscoSeoul
Score7861
Monthly daytime high14 °C to 23.2 °C2 °C to 30 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 105 mm18 mm to 422 mm
Dry months74
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
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Seoul
2
5
11
18
24
28
29
30
26
20
12
4
Sea temperature, °C
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Seoul
6
4
5
8
12
17
21
24
23
20
15
10
Rainfall, mm
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Seoul
18
28
38
70
104
138
422
390
156
49
50
20
Daylight, hours per day
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Seoul
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
San Francisco
No sunshine record
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. San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre). Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan FranciscoSeoul
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
2 h 5 m
€140-229
ICN · 49 km
OsakaKIX, ITM, UKB
10 h 55 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
1 h 40 m
€139-234
ICN · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
13 h 45 m
€770-823
ICN · 49 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
10 h 45 m
€646-685
ICN · 49 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
11 h 10 m
€687-728
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
Hong KongHKG
13 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
3 h 5 m
€172-189
ICN · 49 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
11 h 5 m
€603-659
1 stop
ICN · 49 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
4 h 15 m
no fares
OAK · 18 km
14 h 55 m
€1,052-1072
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 18 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 2026-09 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

MeasureSan FranciscoSeoul
Official languageKorean, Korean Sign Language
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Won (KRW)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number911Police 112, ambulance 119, fire 119
Elevation16 m38 m
Main airportSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinationsIncheon International Airport (ICN)49 km from centre161 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days18 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan FranciscoSeoul
City population873,9659,668,465
People per km²1,45515,973
Museums within 10 km5080
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km05
Distinct cuisines in the centre108156
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone2 months

Where else could you go?

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