Route brief · SFO → SEL
San Francisco → Seoul
$671
round-trip · too little price history on this route to compare
Sep 7 – Sep 29 · 22 nights
UnitedNonstop
Cached fare — the booking search re-prices live before you pay.
Destination briefSELSeoulPalaces wedged between skyscrapers, barbecue smoke at midnight, cafés that outnumber people.Best windowApr–May · Sep–OctAirportsIncheon (ICN) · Gimpo (GMP)All routes into SeoulWhen this route gets cheap.
Cached-fare history: across 5 months, Sep is the cheapest for SF → SEL. Best time to be there: Apr–May · Sep–Oct.
Fares bottom out in September around $633 and peak in December near $1,175 — a $542 spread across the 5 months we track. The cheapest itinerary we are tracking flies United nonstop and takes about 12.5 hours outbound, on a 22-night trip. At $671 for 9,029 km each way, that works out to about $37 per 1,000 km flown. That is below the $44 typical of long-haul fares here. Across the 31 departure cities we track at a similar distance from Seoul, this fare ranks 21st — 39% above the $484 from Istanbul. That puts it in the cheaper half of the 39 routes of similar length we watch out of San Francisco, where the middle fare is $794. Across the 5 months of prices we hold for this route the typical fare is $640, so at $671 this one is $31 above it — no discount to claim here.
The 7 days we hold a cached fare for
Tap a date → live search
The median cached fare across this calendar is 15% higher than when tracking began on Aug 8 — $685 then versus $790 now, across 7 recorded snapshots. This is a calendar-level trend, so an individual deal above can be lower. The lowest single day we have seen here is $614, on Sep 2.
- Tue, Sep 1$633
- Mon, Sep 7$668
- Wed, Sep 9$642
- Sat, Sep 26$790
- Thu, Oct 1$876
- Thu, Oct 8$855
- Sat, Oct 31$1,003
These are the only days we have a cached price for on this route so far — not the only days it flies. The search above covers any date.
Cheapest in Sep · around $633
1% below the $640 typical fare
Cheapest round-trip fare found per month · San Francisco → Seoul · cached-price history
Route facts
- Airports
- SFO · Oakland (OAK) · San José (SJC) ↔ Incheon (ICN) · Gimpo (GMP)
- Flight time
- ~12.5 hours outbound
- Distance
- ~9,029 km each way
- Airlines on the board
- United
- Itineraries
- Nonstop available
- Best months to visit
- Apr–May · Sep–Oct
SF → SEL, answered.
What is the cheapest month to fly from San Francisco to Seoul?
Across 5 months of cached-fare history, Sep comes out cheapest on this route. The best months to actually be in Seoul are Apr–May · Sep–Oct — when those overlap, that's your window.
How far in advance should I book SF → Seoul?
We do not publish a number for this, because we cannot measure it yet. Answering it honestly means watching the same departure date on this route over many weeks as it approaches, and that archive is still filling up — so any "book N days ahead" figure here would be borrowed from somewhere else rather than measured. What we can measure is which month is cheap: across 5 months of cached fares, Sep comes out lowest on this route. See /guides/what-moves-a-flight-price/ for what does move a fare.
Are there nonstop flights from San Francisco to Seoul?
Yes — the current board includes nonstop fares (United). The outbound leg runs around 12.5 hours.
Are these prices guaranteed?
No — these are cached fares found on real searches (this one on September 1). Airlines reprice constantly, so the booking search re-checks the live price before you pay. Fresher finds are far more likely to still be available.
Next step
Sleeping in Seoul?
Lock the flight first — then compare stays for Sep 7 – Sep 29 · 22 nights.
Browse hotels ↗
Missed it?
Cached fares expire. This route has a feed of its own — follow it and the next SF → SEL drop reaches you as soon as we find it.
Follow SF → SEL