VacationSelector

Alicante or Cadiz?

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

Your match

Alicante
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife with your weighting.

Cadiz
49
match

Wins on good for families 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.

The verdict

Choose Alicante if you want the wider choice of places to eat and drink, more park space and protected land within reach, and a longer swimming season, with the sea at 21°C or more for five months against three in Cadiz.

Choose Cadiz if you want a smaller city where the sea meets the centre, more museums, and more attractions for children within walking distance of where you stay.

Scoreboard

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

AlicanteCadiz
Beaches & swimming. Alicante leads by 7 points.7
AlicanteCadiz
Score7770
Swim season months53
Beaches 10 km3329
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Alicante leads by 22 points.22
AlicanteCadiz
Score6644
Restaurants within 2 km of centre867338
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3118
Museums & heritage. Alicante leads by 6 points.6
AlicanteCadiz
Score4236
Museums within 10 km1423
Museums within 2 km of centre1116
Share of museums within 2 km %7970
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Alicante leads by 21 points.21
AlicanteCadiz
Score5130
Drinking venues within 4 km591241
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre488175
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8373
Nightclubs within 4 km546
Nature & day trips. Alicante leads by 14 points.14
AlicanteCadiz
Score4026
Protected land share 50 km %74
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5945
Park area within 2 km60 hectares24 hectares
Good for families. Cadiz leads by 12 points.12
AlicanteCadiz
Score4254
Tourist attractions within 2 km1380
Park area within 2 km60 hectares24 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Cadiz leads by 5 points.5
AlicanteCadiz
Score2631
Notable places within 2 km1823
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Alicante and Cadiz are level on 71.
AlicanteCadiz
Score7171
Price level global60.860.8
Daily budget€122€122
Year-round weather. Alicante leads by 4 points.4
AlicanteCadiz
Score8783
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 31.1 °C16.2 °C to 28 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 52 mm0 mm to 89 mm
Dry months115
0255075100

Where they differ

Alicante has about three times as many restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens, roughly twice as many bars and many times as many nightclubs, most of them central. It reaches more countryside: 7% of the surrounding land is protected against 4% at Cadiz, with about three times as much park space, one theme park and 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach.

Cadiz has about twice as many museums, many times as many tourist attractions near the centre, and somewhat more notable places within walking distance.

Where they are alike

Both are mild all year and neither gets cold: January highs of 17°C in Alicante and 16°C in Cadiz, August of 31°C and 28°C. Sun is plentiful in both, and neither has a season you would call unusable.

They are alike in what a short walk gets you. Both centres put the sea within 1km, both have a modest museum offering rather than a major one, and in both the notable places sit close enough together to cover on foot.

Which traveller are you?

If your evenings matter, Alicante. It has roughly three times as many restaurants near the centre, a wider spread of kitchens, about twice as many bars and far more nightclubs, nearly all within reach of the middle of town.

Families with young children are better served in Cadiz, where far more tourist attractions sit near the centre and distances are short. Alicante answers with more park space and one theme park within reach, if that is the draw.

Swimmers should lean to Alicante: 33 beaches nearby and sea at 21°C or more for five months against three, though Cadiz puts the water at the edge of its centre.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value comparison between these two carries no information. The figure behind it is a national price level, identical for both by construction, and the €122 a day sits beside each as one national estimate rather than a measurement of either city. Neither is the cheaper trip on this evidence; judge cost from your own accommodation and travel.

High beach and weather numbers also hide season. Alicante's long swimming window peaks in August at 31°C, which is also when the coast is fullest, and Cadiz's driest month is its busiest one. Cadiz's attraction count is concentrated in one small walkable centre, so it describes density rather than quiet.

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
Cadiz
16
17
19
20
23
26
28
28
26
23
20
17
Sea temperature, °C
Alicante
15
14
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Cadiz
16
15
16
17
18
21
23
23
22
20
18
17
Rainfall, mm
Alicante
21
18
25
34
21
8
3
12
52
32
34
23
Cadiz
62
52
54
43
32
6
0
2
29
76
89
73
Daylight, hours per day
Alicante
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Cadiz
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Alicante
6
6
8
8
10
10
11
10
8
7
6
6
Cadiz
6
7
8
9
11
12
12
11
9
8
6
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Alicante: 1991-2020 normals, Alicante (2.8 km from centre). Cadiz: 1991-2020 normals, Cadiz Bay / Puntales (5.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Alicante is the better pick either side of high summer. June reaches 28°C on 8mm of rain, and the sea stays at 21°C or above into October, so the swimming season runs longer at both ends. Its wet spot comes early in autumn, 52mm in September.

Cadiz peaks in July and August, 28°C with the sea at 23°C and almost no rain. From mid-autumn into winter it takes 62-89mm a month, while Alicante stays drier through the same stretch.

Getting there

Flying fromAlicanteCadiz
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€46-56
ALC · 10 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
XRY · 31 km
BilbaoBIO
1 h 20 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
1 h 30 m
€112-119
SVQ · 105 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
€62-93
ALC · 10 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
XRY · 31 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€85-109
ALC · 10 km
2 h 35 m
€83-157
TNG · 95 km
Santiago De CompostelaSCQ
1 h 40 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SVQ · 105 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€72-86
ALC · 10 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
XRY · 31 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
€62-83
ALC · 10 km
2 h 25 m
€89-105
SVQ · 105 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 40 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SVQ · 105 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 35 m
€150-169
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
TNG · 95 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 50 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
SVQ · 105 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

MeasureAlicanteCadiz
Official languageSpanishSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation3 m11 m
Main airportAlicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ALC)10 km from centre124 non-stop destinationsJerez Airport (XRY)31 km from centre23 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureAlicanteCadiz
City population366,221109,950
People per km²1,8199,087
Museums within 10 km811
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre5228
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Alicante or Cadiz 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.