VacationSelector

Seattle or Vancouver?

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

Your match

Seattle
52
match

Wins on year-round weather and sights concentration with your weighting.

Vancouver
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

The verdict

Choose Seattle if you want the warmer, drier summer and a centre where the notable places sit close together: highs reach 25°C in August and the summer stays comparatively dry.

Choose Vancouver if the trip is built around getting outdoors, with far more protected land around the city, more park space near the centre and warmer water for swimming.

Scoreboard

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

SeattleVancouver
Beaches & swimming. Seattle and Vancouver are level on 60.
SeattleVancouver
Score6060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km100109
Coast distance1 km1 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. Seattle leads by 1 points.1
SeattleVancouver
Score7574
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4601,330
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3535
Museums & heritage. Seattle leads by 2 points.2
SeattleVancouver
Score3634
Museums within 10 km2827
Museums within 2 km of centre1715
Share of museums within 2 km %6156
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Seattle and Vancouver are level on 57.
SeattleVancouver
Score5757
Drinking venues within 4 km873848
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre696602
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8071
Nightclubs within 4 km3444
Nature & day trips. Vancouver leads by 37 points.37
SeattleVancouver
Score4077
Protected land share 50 km %919
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8060
Park area within 2 km63 hectares103 hectares
Good for families. Vancouver leads by 7 points.7
SeattleVancouver
Score4653
Tourist attractions within 2 km1715
Park area within 2 km63 hectares103 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. Seattle leads by 4 points.4
SeattleVancouver
Score5248
Notable places within 2 km7663
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Vancouver leads by 11 points.11
SeattleVancouver
Score4354
Price level global10084
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Seattle leads by 8 points.8
SeattleVancouver
Score6153
Monthly daytime high7.8 °C to 24.9 °C7.3 °C to 23 °C
Monthly rainfall15 mm to 160 mm42 mm to 245 mm
Dry months30
0255075100

Where they differ

Seattle runs warmer across the year, with daytime highs of 8-25°C against Vancouver's 7-23°C, and its summer months can drop to 40mm of rain or less, which Vancouver never manages. Notable places also sit more tightly around the centre, museums included, so more of a short trip is walkable.

Vancouver is the stronger base for days outdoors: 19% of the land around it is protected against 9% near Seattle, with more park space close to the centre. Families also gain from 3 theme parks within reach against Seattle's 1.

Where they are alike

Both sit 1km from the sea, and each has around 100 beaches within reach. Neither gets a month of sea at 21°C or more, so swimming is brief and bracing rather than a reason to come.

They match closely on eating and drinking: a similar number of restaurants near the centre, a comparable range of kitchens, and as many bars, though Vancouver has somewhat more nightclubs. Museum numbers are similar, with no UNESCO-listed site within day-trip reach of either.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone planning hikes and days out of the city should take Vancouver: 19% of the surrounding land is protected against 9% around Seattle, and there is more park space within reach of the centre.

A weekend walker is better served in Seattle, where the notable places and museums sit tightly around the centre and the restaurant choice is as broad as Vancouver's, so days need less transport.

Families with children lean to Vancouver, with 3 theme parks within reach against Seattle's 1 and more central park space, though Seattle's warmer, drier summer, up to 25°C, makes outdoor days more reliable.

What the numbers don't tell you

The dataset carries no daily spending figure for either city, so nothing here tells you which trip costs more; the value axis rests on a different measure and should not be read as a price comparison.

No weather station near Seattle records sunshine hours, so that side of the weather comparison is unmeasured rather than poor; its month-by-month picture rests on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone. A long list of beaches also flatters both: neither has a month of sea above 21°C, and Vancouver tops out at 16°C, so swimming stays short. The warmest months are also the only reliably dry ones, which concentrates the good window.

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
Vancouver
7
8
11
14
18
20
23
23
19
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Seattle
8
8
8
9
10
11
12
12
11
10
9
9
Vancouver
7
7
8
10
12
14
16
16
14
11
9
8
Rainfall, mm
Seattle
147
96
106
81
48
37
15
25
41
99
160
147
Vancouver
237
121
164
114
73
65
42
49
71
155
245
196
Daylight, hours per day
Seattle
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Vancouver
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Seattle
No sunshine record
Vancouver
2
3
4
6
8
7
10
9
7
4
2
2

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). Vancouver: 1991-2020 normals, Vancouver Harbour CS (4.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Seattle is the drier pick through summer, with highs of 21-25°C from June and July falling to 15mm of rain, the driest month either city has. Rain stays low through the rest of the season.

Vancouver peaks in July and August at 23°C, with the sea at 16°C, warmer for swimming than Seattle manages in any month. Late autumn separates them sharply: 245mm of rain in November here against 160mm in Seattle, so off-season trips sit better on the Seattle side.

Getting there

Flying fromSeattleVancouver
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
2 h 30 m
€111-203
SEA · 18 km
2 h 45 m
€147-217
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
PhoenixPHX, AZA
2 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
San FranciscoSFO
1 h 55 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
KelownaYLW
1 h 5 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
TokyoHND, NRT
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
Las VegasLAS
2 h 20 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 15 m
€300-424
SEA · 18 km
5 h 15 m
€353-356
YVR · 9 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 55 m
€257-317
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
5 h 5 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
5 h 20 m
no fares
YVR · 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

MeasureSeattleVancouver
Official language–French, English
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation40 m2 m
Main airportSeattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)18 km from centre135 non-stop destinationsVancouver International Airport (YVR)9 km from centre99 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureSeattleVancouver
City population737,015662,248
People per km²1,9965,759
Museums within 10 km2726
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre7885
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 Vancouver 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.