VacationSelector

San Sebastian or Seoul?

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

Your match

San Sebastian
51
match

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

Seoul
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on good for families and museums & heritage 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 SebastianSeoul
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 40 points.40
San SebastianSeoul
Score5515
Swim season months22
Beaches 10 km101
Coast distance0 km28 km
Water distance0 km28 km
Places to eat. Seoul leads by 30 points.30
San SebastianSeoul
Score5585
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4723,559
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2632
Museums & heritage. Seoul leads by 44 points.44
San SebastianSeoul
Score3983
Museums within 10 km17203
Museums within 2 km of centre790
Share of museums within 2 km %4144
Unesco sites within 50 km35
Nightlife. Seoul leads by 40 points.40
San SebastianSeoul
Score4080
Drinking venues within 4 km3883,291
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre3381,630
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8750
Nightclubs within 4 km1229
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 24 points.24
San SebastianSeoul
Score5632
Protected land share 50 km %111
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5295
Park area within 2 km70 hectares126 hectares
Good for families. Seoul leads by 49 points.49
San SebastianSeoul
Score3079
Tourist attractions within 2 km562
Park area within 2 km70 hectares126 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km18
Sights concentration. Seoul leads by 5 points.5
San SebastianSeoul
Score5459
Notable places within 2 km89118
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seoul leads by 1 points.1
San SebastianSeoul
Score7172
Price level global60.859.4
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Seoul leads by 3 points.3
San SebastianSeoul
Score5861
Monthly daytime high11.2 °C to 22.9 °C2 °C to 30 °C
Monthly rainfall92 mm to 203 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
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Seoul
2
5
11
18
24
28
29
30
26
20
12
4
Sea temperature, °C
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Seoul
6
4
5
8
12
17
21
24
23
20
15
10
Rainfall, mm
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Seoul
18
28
38
70
104
138
422
390
156
49
50
20
Daylight, hours per day
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Seoul
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
San Sebastian
3
4
5
5
7
6
7
6
6
5
3
3
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 Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre). Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan SebastianSeoul
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
11 h 10 m
€687-728
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
10 h 45 m
€646-685
ICN · 49 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
10 h 45 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
10 h 40 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
12 h 25 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
11 h 55 m
€680-750
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
11 h 5 m
€603-659
1 stop
ICN · 49 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 75 km
10 h 0 m
€493-591
ICN · 49 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 30 m
€129-223
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
12 h 55 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
13 h 45 m
€770-823
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

MeasureSan SebastianSeoul
Official languageSpanishKorean, Korean Sign Language
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Won (KRW)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number112Police 112, ambulance 119, fire 119
Elevation6 m38 m
Main airportSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinationsIncheon International Airport (ICN)49 km from centre161 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days18 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan SebastianSeoul
City population189,8669,668,465
People per km²3,11815,973
Museums within 10 km1480
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km35
Distinct cuisines in the centre45156
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow San Sebastian 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.