VacationSelector

Seattle or Sydney?

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.

Sydney
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on year-round weather and nightlife 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.

SeattleSydney
Beaches & swimming. Seattle and Sydney are level on 60.
SeattleSydney
Score6060
Swim season months06
Beaches 10 km100160
Coast distance1 km7 km
Water distance1 km7 km
Places to eat. Sydney leads by 3 points.3
SeattleSydney
Score7578
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4602,205
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3531
Museums & heritage. Sydney leads by 15 points.15
SeattleSydney
Score3651
Museums within 10 km2844
Museums within 2 km of centre1720
Share of museums within 2 km %6145
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. Sydney leads by 18 points.18
SeattleSydney
Score5775
Drinking venues within 4 km8732,050
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre6961,405
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8069
Nightclubs within 4 km34120
Nature & day trips. Sydney leads by 18 points.18
SeattleSydney
Score4058
Protected land share 50 km %910
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8052
Park area within 2 km63 hectares115 hectares
Good for families. Sydney leads by 18 points.18
SeattleSydney
Score4664
Tourist attractions within 2 km1737
Park area within 2 km63 hectares115 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Sydney leads by 8 points.8
SeattleSydney
Score5260
Notable places within 2 km76123
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sydney leads by 7 points.7
SeattleSydney
Score4350
Price level global10090.2
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Sydney leads by 20 points.20
SeattleSydney
Score6181
Monthly daytime high7.8 °C to 24.9 °C17.7 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall15 mm to 160 mm55 mm to 121 mm
Dry months30
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
Seattle
8
10
12
15
19
21
25
25
22
15
11
8
Sydney
28
27
26
23
21
18
18
19
22
24
25
26
Sea temperature, °C
Seattle
8
8
8
9
10
11
12
12
11
10
9
9
Sydney
23
23
23
22
21
20
19
18
18
19
20
21
Rainfall, mm
Seattle
147
96
106
81
48
37
15
25
41
99
160
147
Sydney
80
116
90
95
89
121
70
63
57
55
71
68
Daylight, hours per day
Seattle
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sydney
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Seattle
No sunshine record
Sydney
8
6
7
7
7
6
7
8
8
8
7
8

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). Sydney: 1991-2020 normals, Sydney Airport (3.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSeattleSydney
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
2 h 30 m
€111-203
SEA · 18 km
14 h 50 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 30 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
10 h 30 m
€548-574
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
TokyoHND, NRT
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
9 h 50 m
€671
SYD · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
20 h 40 m
€931-1073
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
San FranciscoSFO
1 h 55 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
14 h 45 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
55 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
15 h 20 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
HonoluluHNL
5 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
10 h 15 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 15 m
€300-424
SEA · 18 km
19 h 30 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 50 m
€204-286
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
16 h 55 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
DohaDOH
14 h 40 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
15 h 15 m
€997-1100
SYD · 9 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

MeasureSeattleSydney
Official languageEnglish
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Australian Dollar (AUD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzI230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+10, UTC+11 in summer
Emergency number911000
Elevation40 m6 m
Main airportSeattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)18 km from centre135 non-stop destinationsSydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (SYD)9 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureSeattleSydney
City population737,0155,450,496
People per km²1,996449
Museums within 10 km2738
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre7879
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone6 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Seattle or Sydney 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.