VacationSelector

Alicante or Cordoba?

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 beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.

Cordoba
47
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 the coast is the point: 33 beaches, a sea warm enough to swim through summer and into autumn, a wider range of places to eat, and no month hotter than 31°C.

Choose Cordoba if you would rather walk a compact centre with more to see on foot, more museums and more parks and attractions for children, and can handle July and August highs of 37°C.

Scoreboard

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

AlicanteCordoba
Beaches & swimming. Alicante leads by 77 points.77
AlicanteCordoba
Score770
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km330
Coast distance1 km134 km
Water distance1 km—
Places to eat. Alicante leads by 19 points.19
AlicanteCordoba
Score6647
Restaurants within 2 km of centre867616
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3113
Museums & heritage. Cordoba leads by 5 points.5
AlicanteCordoba
Score4247
Museums within 10 km1420
Museums within 2 km of centre1119
Share of museums within 2 km %7995
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Alicante leads by 8 points.8
AlicanteCordoba
Score5143
Drinking venues within 4 km591444
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre488353
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8380
Nightclubs within 4 km5414
Nature & day trips. Alicante leads by 3 points.3
AlicanteCordoba
Score4037
Protected land share 50 km %76
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %59100
Park area within 2 km60 hectares108 hectares
Good for families. Cordoba leads by 21 points.21
AlicanteCordoba
Score4263
Tourist attractions within 2 km1359
Park area within 2 km60 hectares108 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Cordoba leads by 18 points.18
AlicanteCordoba
Score2644
Notable places within 2 km1848
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Alicante and Cordoba are level on 71.
AlicanteCordoba
Score7171
Price level global60.860.8
Daily budget€122€122
Year-round weather. Alicante leads by 15 points.15
AlicanteCordoba
Score8772
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 31.1 °C15.1 °C to 37.1 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 52 mm1 mm to 91 mm
Dry months114
0255075100

Where they differ

Alicante has 33 beaches nearby and a sea at 21°C or more through summer and into autumn, peaking at 26°C; Cordoba has no coast. It also has a wider range of kitchens, somewhat more restaurants near the centre and about three times as many nightclubs.

Cordoba has about three times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, so more works on foot. It has somewhat more museums, roughly twice the park space near the centre and many more attractions for children, though the one theme park is Alicante's.

Where they are alike

Neither has much wild country on the doorstep: protected land covers 7% around Alicante and 6% around Cordoba, so day trips are a supplement rather than the reason to go.

Heritage sits at a similar level too: each has 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, with Cordoba holding somewhat more museums. Nightlife is moderate in both and concentrated near the centre, so an evening out means walking rather than travelling.

Which traveller are you?

If swimming is the point of the trip, Alicante is the only option of the two: 33 beaches nearby and a sea warm enough from June to October, against a city with no coast at all.

Families with young children get more out of Cordoba, with many more attractions and roughly twice the park space near the centre, though Alicante holds the one theme park within reach and the milder summer.

If you travel to eat and go out, Alicante has the wider range of kitchens, somewhat more restaurants near the centre and about three times as many nightclubs, most of them walkable in both cities.

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 beside it is one national estimate rather than a measurement of either city. Neither is the cheaper trip on this evidence.

Dry is not the same as comfortable. Cordoba's driest month, July at 1mm, is also its hottest at 37°C, while the months that walk best are the ones carrying the year's heaviest rain. And Alicante's beach count says nothing about how crowded those beaches are when the sea is warmest.

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
Cordoba
15
17
21
24
28
33
37
37
32
26
19
16
Sea temperature, °C
Alicante
15
14
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Cordoba
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Alicante
21
18
25
34
21
8
3
12
52
32
34
23
Cordoba
57
53
63
54
43
11
1
7
37
79
79
91
Daylight, hours per day
Alicante
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Cordoba
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
Cordoba
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
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). Cordoba: 1991-2020 normals, Cordoba / Aeropuerto (7.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Alicante is at its best in May and June, with highs of 24-28°C, rain down at 8-21mm and a sea at 22-26°C from June to October. September is the wet spot at 52mm.

Cordoba is better in April and May, when highs run 24-28°C, before July and August push them to 37°C. Its autumn and winter are much wetter, 79-91mm from October to December, which makes October at 26°C the last easy month.

Getting there

Flying fromAlicanteCordoba
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€46-56
ALC · 10 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
SVQ · 111 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
€62-93
ALC · 10 km
1 h 35 m
€111-178
1 stop
SVQ · 111 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€85-109
ALC · 10 km
2 h 25 m
€99-133
1 stop
SVQ · 111 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 0 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
SVQ · 111 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 25 m
€102-119
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
SVQ · 111 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€72-86
ALC · 10 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
SVQ · 111 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 40 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SVQ · 111 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 35 m
€150-169
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
2 h 50 m
€180-230
1 stop
SVQ · 111 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 50 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
SVQ · 111 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 127 km
7 h 25 m
no fares
AGP · 137 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

MeasureAlicanteCordoba
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 m120 m
Main airportAlicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ALC)10 km from centre124 non-stop destinationsCórdoba Airport (ODB)8 km from centre3 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureAlicanteCordoba
City population366,221323,262
People per km²1,819258
Museums within 10 km816
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre5227
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months–

Where else could you go?

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