VacationSelector

Seattle or Zurich?

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

Your match

Seattle
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Zurich
44
match

Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration 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.

SeattleZurich
Beaches & swimming. Seattle leads by 60 points.60
SeattleZurich
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km10023
Coast distance1 km632 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Seattle leads by 8 points.8
SeattleZurich
Score7567
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,460974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3530
Museums & heritage. Zurich leads by 20 points.20
SeattleZurich
Score3656
Museums within 10 km2876
Museums within 2 km of centre1737
Share of museums within 2 km %6149
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Seattle leads by 3 points.3
SeattleZurich
Score5754
Drinking venues within 4 km873676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre696553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8082
Nightclubs within 4 km3474
Nature & day trips. Seattle leads by 3 points.3
SeattleZurich
Score4037
Protected land share 50 km %916
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %80100
Park area within 2 km63 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Seattle leads by 10 points.10
SeattleZurich
Score4636
Tourist attractions within 2 km178
Park area within 2 km63 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Zurich leads by 7 points.7
SeattleZurich
Score5259
Notable places within 2 km76119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seattle leads by 8 points.8
SeattleZurich
Score4335
Price level global100110.5
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. Seattle leads by 8 points.8
SeattleZurich
Score6153
Monthly daytime high7.8 °C to 24.9 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall15 mm to 160 mm60 mm to 128 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
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Seattle
8
8
8
9
10
11
12
12
11
10
9
9
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Seattle
147
96
106
81
48
37
15
25
41
99
160
147
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Seattle
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Seattle
No sunshine record
Zurich
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1

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). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSeattleZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 15 m
€300-424
SEA · 18 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
2 h 30 m
€111-203
SEA · 18 km
11 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 55 m
€257-317
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
10 h 20 m
€554-583
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
San FranciscoSFO
1 h 55 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 40 m
€1,006-1077
2 stops
SEA · 18 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
12 h 10 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
9 h 55 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 30 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 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

MeasureSeattleZurich
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation40 m408 m
Main airportSeattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)18 km from centre135 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureSeattleZurich
City population737,015452,421
People per km²1,9965,147
Museums within 10 km2763
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre7878
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Seattle or Zurich 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.