VacationSelector

Alicante or Athens?

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

Your match

Alicante
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Athens
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage 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.

AlicanteAthens
Beaches & swimming. Alicante leads by 29 points.29
AlicanteAthens
Score7748
Swim season months55
Beaches 10 km3314
Coast distance1 km6 km
Water distance1 km6 km
Places to eat. Athens leads by 3 points.3
AlicanteAthens
Score6669
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8671,431
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3125
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 31 points.31
AlicanteAthens
Score4273
Museums within 10 km14122
Museums within 2 km of centre1178
Share of museums within 2 km %7964
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Athens leads by 30 points.30
AlicanteAthens
Score5181
Drinking venues within 4 km5912,718
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre4881,354
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8350
Nightclubs within 4 km54136
Nature & day trips. Athens leads by 5 points.5
AlicanteAthens
Score4045
Protected land share 50 km %75
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5950
Park area within 2 km60 hectares128 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 29 points.29
AlicanteAthens
Score4271
Tourist attractions within 2 km1368
Park area within 2 km60 hectares128 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 49 points.49
AlicanteAthens
Score2675
Notable places within 2 km18291
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 3 points.3
AlicanteAthens
Score7174
Price level global60.855.8
Daily budget€122€125
Year-round weather. Alicante leads by 13 points.13
AlicanteAthens
Score8774
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 31.1 °C13.4 °C to 34.5 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 52 mm6 mm to 86 mm
Dry months117
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
Alicante
17
18
20
22
24
28
30
31
29
25
21
18
Athens
13
14
17
21
27
32
34
35
30
24
19
15
Sea temperature, °C
Alicante
15
14
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Alicante
21
18
25
34
21
8
3
12
52
32
34
23
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Alicante
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Alicante
6
6
8
8
10
10
11
10
8
7
6
6
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Alicante: 1991-2020 normals, Alicante (2.8 km from centre). Athens: 1991-2020 normals, Athens / Athenai / Pláka (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAlicanteAthens
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€46-56
ALC · 10 km
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 25 m
€102-119
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
3 h 10 m
€195-281
ATH · 20 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€85-109
ALC · 10 km
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 35 m
€150-169
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
3 h 15 m
€202-223
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 40 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
€62-93
ALC · 10 km
2 h 55 m
€134-222
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 0 m
€102-136
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
1 h 55 m
€97-139
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
€62-83
ALC · 10 km
2 h 25 m
€71-91
ATH · 20 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 50 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
4 h 10 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 127 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
ATH · 20 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

MeasureAlicanteAthens
Official languageSpanishGreek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation3 m74 m
Main airportAlicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ALC)10 km from centre124 non-stop destinationsAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureAlicanteAthens
City population366,221643,452
People per km²1,81916,499
Museums within 10 km888
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre5282
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Alicante or Athens 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.