Seoul or Tokyo?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.
Wins on nature & day trips 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.
The verdict
Choose Seoul if palaces, museums and heritage sites are the point, and if you want attractions and green space packed close to the centre, with a dry, clear October.
Choose Tokyo if you are there for the eating and the late nights, and if you want the milder winter, with January highs near 10°C against Seoul's 2°C, and the sea just 5km away.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Tokyo leads by 6 points.6
| Seoul | Tokyo | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 15 | 21 |
| Swim season months | 2 | 4 |
| Beaches 10 km | 1 | 1 |
| Coast distance | 28 km | 5 km |
| Water distance | 28 km | 5 km |
Places to eat. Tokyo leads by 5 points.5
| Seoul | Tokyo | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 85 | 90 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 3,559 | 6,936 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 32 | 25 |
Museums & heritage. Seoul leads by 17 points.17
| Seoul | Tokyo | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 83 | 66 |
| Museums within 10 km | 203 | 302 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 90 | 52 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 44 | 17 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 5 | 1 |
Nightlife. Tokyo leads by 15 points.15
| Seoul | Tokyo | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 80 | 95 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 3,291 | 6,895 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 1,630 | 3,033 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 50 | 44 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 29 | 58 |
Nature & day trips. Tokyo leads by 26 points.26
| Seoul | Tokyo | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 32 | 58 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 1 | — |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 95 | 85 |
| Park area within 2 km | 126 hectares | 85 hectares |
Good for families. Seoul leads by 8 points.8
| Seoul | Tokyo | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 79 | 71 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 62 | 40 |
| Park area within 2 km | 126 hectares | 85 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 8 | 9 |
Sights concentration. Tokyo leads by 1 points.1
| Seoul | Tokyo | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 59 | 60 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 118 | 121 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Seoul leads by 2 points.2
| Seoul | Tokyo | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 72 | 70 |
| Price level global | 59.4 | 62.4 |
| Daily budget | — | — |
Year-round weather. Tokyo leads by 3 points.3
| Seoul | Tokyo | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 61 | 64 |
| Monthly daytime high | 2 °C to 30 °C | 10 °C to 31.5 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 18 mm to 422 mm | 57 mm to 237 mm |
| Dry months | 4 | 0 |
Where they differ
Seoul is the stronger heritage city: 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Tokyo's 1, museums clustered tightly around the centre, and about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre, with somewhat more park space too.
Tokyo does better for days out into nature beyond the city, and its nightlife is on another scale: roughly twice as many bars and twice as many clubs, about half of each near the centre. It also has about twice as many restaurants near the centre.
Where they are alike
Both put a similar number of notable places within walking distance of the centre, so in either city you can spend days on foot without needing transport for every stop.
They are close on food: eating out is a main reason to visit either, though Seoul spreads across a somewhat wider range of kitchens. Neither is a beach city; each has just 1 beach nearby, and the sea only passes 21°C in high summer.
Which traveller are you?
Heritage travellers should take Seoul. Its museums sit close together around the centre and it puts 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Tokyo's 1, which makes a week of sightseeing easy to plan.
Anyone travelling to eat and stay out late should take Tokyo, with roughly twice as many restaurants near the centre as Seoul and twice as many bars and clubs, about half of them central.
Families lean to Seoul: about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre and more park space, though theme parks are near enough even, 9 within reach of Tokyo against Seoul's 8.
What the numbers don't tell you
No daily cost figure exists for either city here, so this comparison cannot tell you which trip is the cheaper one, and nothing on the page should be read that way. Price both yourself before deciding.
August is the warmest month in both, at 30°C in Seoul and 32°C in Tokyo, and the sea is at its warmest then too. That reads better than it travels: it is also the wettest stretch in Seoul, and the sea sits 28km from the centre there, so the warm-month figures are not a swimming trip.
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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre). Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre).
Seoul is at its best in May, at 24°C with 104mm of rain, and again in October, at 20°C with just 49mm. Skip July and August, when 422mm and 390mm fall, the wettest stretch of either city's year.
Tokyo is the safer winter trip: January highs of 10°C against Seoul's 2°C. Its own summer stays drier than Seoul's, near 155mm in August, but autumn turns wet, with 221mm in September and 237mm in October, so late spring suits it better than early autumn.
Getting there
| Flying from | Seoul | Tokyo |
|---|---|---|
| OsakaKIX, ITM, UKB | 1 h 40 m €139-234 ICN · 49 km | 1 h 10 m €106-119 HND · 18 km |
| ShanghaiPVG, SHA | 1 h 40 m €197-199 1 stop ICN · 49 km | 2 h 45 m €296-314 HND · 18 km |
| Hong KongHKG | 3 h 5 m €172-189 ICN · 49 km | 4 h 10 m €255-268 NRT · 56 km |
| BangkokBKK, DMK | 5 h 0 m €176-202 ICN · 49 km | 6 h 10 m €318-337 NRT · 56 km |
| FukuokaFUK | 1 h 20 m no fares ICN · 49 km | 1 h 40 m €136-196 HND · 18 km |
| SapporoCTS, OKD | 2 h 20 m no fares ICN · 49 km | 1 h 40 m €149-164 HND · 18 km |
| San FranciscoSFO | 11 h 20 m €560-734 ICN · 49 km | 10 h 25 m €755-991 1 stop HND · 18 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 10 h 45 m €646-685 ICN · 49 km | 11 h 40 m €786-939 1 stop HND · 18 km |
| DohaDOH | 9 h 0 m no fares ICN · 49 km | 10 h 25 m €931-1048 1 stop HND · 18 km |
| Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC | 14 h 55 m €1,052-1072 2 stops ICN · 49 km | 13 h 55 m no fares NRT · 56 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 2026-09 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
| Measure | Seoul | Tokyo |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | Korean, Korean Sign Language | Japanese |
| Currency | Won (KRW) | Yen (JPY) |
| Sockets | CF220 V, 60 Hz | AB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region |
| Driving side | Right | Left |
| Time zone | UTC+9 | UTC+9 |
| Emergency number | Police 112, ambulance 119, fire 119 | Police 110, fire 119 |
| Elevation | 38 m | 6 m |
| Main airport | Incheon International Airport (ICN)49 km from centre161 non-stop destinations | Tokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 18 days | 16 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Seoul | Tokyo |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 9,668,465 | 14,264,798 |
| People per km² | 15,973 | 6,501 |
| Museums within 10 km | 80 | 191 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 5 | 1 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 156 | 125 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | 2 months | 4 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Seoul or Tokyo somewhere new.