VacationSelector

Seattle or San Francisco?

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

Your match

Seattle
52
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

San Francisco
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

The verdict

Choose San Francisco if you want a season that stretches from spring into October, with more restaurants, bars and clubs near the centre and more protected land within day-trip reach.

Choose Seattle if the water matters most: more beaches close by, a shorter walk to the shore, and a hotter peak summer at 25°C, accepting a much shorter dry window.

Scoreboard

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

SeattleSan Francisco
Beaches & swimming. Seattle and San Francisco are level on 60.
SeattleSan Francisco
Score6060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km10044
Coast distance1 km2 km
Water distance1 km2 km
Places to eat. San Francisco leads by 8 points.8
SeattleSan Francisco
Score7583
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4602,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3539
Museums & heritage. San Francisco leads by 8 points.8
SeattleSan Francisco
Score3644
Museums within 10 km2857
Museums within 2 km of centre1729
Share of museums within 2 km %6151
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. San Francisco leads by 11 points.11
SeattleSan Francisco
Score5768
Drinking venues within 4 km8731,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre696928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8065
Nightclubs within 4 km3497
Nature & day trips. San Francisco leads by 20 points.20
SeattleSan Francisco
Score4060
Protected land share 50 km %917
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %8057
Park area within 2 km63 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. San Francisco leads by 11 points.11
SeattleSan Francisco
Score4657
Tourist attractions within 2 km1748
Park area within 2 km63 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. San Francisco leads by 11 points.11
SeattleSan Francisco
Score5263
Notable places within 2 km76147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seattle and San Francisco are level on 43.
SeattleSan Francisco
Score4343
Price level global100100
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 17 points.17
SeattleSan Francisco
Score6178
Monthly daytime high7.8 °C to 24.9 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall15 mm to 160 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months37
0255075100

Where they differ

San Francisco has about twice as many restaurants and drinking places near the centre as Seattle, and about three times as many nightclubs, most of them close in. It is also the better base for getting out: 17% of the surrounding land is protected against 9% around Seattle, and 7 months of the year see 40mm of rain or less, against 3 in Seattle.

Seattle answers with the coast: 100 beaches nearby against San Francisco's 44, the water closer to the centre, and warmer summer highs at 25°C.

Where they are alike

Both sit on the water without being swimming destinations: the sea is 1km from Seattle's centre and 2km from San Francisco's, yet neither has a month with sea at 21°C or more, and the warmest water reaches 14°C and 12°C respectively.

They are close on eating and heritage too: both cover a similar range of kitchens, and neither has a UNESCO-listed place within day-trip reach, so museums are a supporting act in each.

Which traveller are you?

Eating and going out: San Francisco, with about twice as many restaurants and drinking places near the centre, roughly three times the nightclubs, and about twice as many notable places within walking distance.

Walkers and day-trippers: San Francisco again, with 17% of the surrounding land protected against 9%, though Seattle keeps more park space near the centre if you would rather not leave town.

Families drawn to the shore: Seattle, with 100 beaches nearby and the water 1km from the centre. Both have 1 theme park, but San Francisco has roughly three times the attractions near the centre.

What the numbers don't tell you

Cost is the one comparison you cannot make here. The value figure is a national price level, identical for the two by construction, and no daily budget figure exists for either city, so nothing in this data says which trip costs more.

Sunshine is missing for both, so the monthly picture rests on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone; that side of the weather is unmeasured, not poor. Closeness to the water is also not the same as swimming weather: the warmest month reaches 14°C in San Francisco and 12°C in Seattle, so the shore is for walking.

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
Seattle
8
10
12
15
19
21
25
25
22
15
11
8
San Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Seattle
8
8
8
9
10
11
12
12
11
10
9
9
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Seattle
147
96
106
81
48
37
15
25
41
99
160
147
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Seattle
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Seattle: 1991-2020 normals, Seattle-Tacoma Airport (17.3 km from centre). San Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

San Francisco's window is wide: June to October brings highs of 22-23°C and rainfall of 0-27mm, and April and May already work at 20°C. Winter stays mild but wet, so the shoulder months carry the trip.

Seattle is worth the trip in July and August, when highs reach 25°C and rain falls to 15-25mm, the only reliably dry stretch. Either side of it rain climbs past 99mm from October, and midwinter highs of 8°C make outdoor days short.

Getting there

Flying fromSeattleSan Francisco
PhoenixPHX, AZA
2 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
TokyoHND, NRT
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 15 m
€300-424
SEA · 18 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
2 h 30 m
€111-203
SEA · 18 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
OAK · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 50 m
€204-286
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DenverDEN, APA
2 h 35 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 30 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
GuadalajaraGDL
4 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
OAK · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 40 m
€1,006-1077
2 stops
SEA · 18 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 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

MeasureSeattleSan Francisco
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
Elevation40 m16 m
Main airportSeattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)18 km from centre135 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureSeattleSan Francisco
City population737,015873,965
People per km²1,9961,455
Museums within 10 km2750
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre78108
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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