VacationSelector

Alicante or Dublin?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Alicante
56
match

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

Dublin
55
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.

AlicanteDublin
Beaches & swimming. Alicante leads by 28 points.28
AlicanteDublin
Score7749
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km3311
Coast distance1 km3 km
Water distance1 km3 km
Places to eat. Dublin leads by 4 points.4
AlicanteDublin
Score6670
Restaurants within 2 km of centre867920
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3137
Museums & heritage. Dublin leads by 13 points.13
AlicanteDublin
Score4255
Museums within 10 km1447
Museums within 2 km of centre1137
Share of museums within 2 km %7979
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Dublin leads by 13 points.13
AlicanteDublin
Score5164
Drinking venues within 4 km5911,239
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre488934
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8375
Nightclubs within 4 km5440
Nature & day trips. Alicante leads by 14 points.14
AlicanteDublin
Score4026
Protected land share 50 km %73
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5962
Park area within 2 km60 hectares43 hectares
Good for families. Dublin leads by 12 points.12
AlicanteDublin
Score4254
Tourist attractions within 2 km1341
Park area within 2 km60 hectares43 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Dublin leads by 36 points.36
AlicanteDublin
Score2662
Notable places within 2 km18141
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Alicante leads by 14 points.14
AlicanteDublin
Score7157
Price level global60.880.2
Daily budget€122€187
Year-round weather. Alicante leads by 33 points.33
AlicanteDublin
Score8754
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 31.1 °C8.2 °C to 19.5 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 52 mm52 mm to 83 mm
Dry months110
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
Dublin
8
9
10
12
15
18
20
19
17
14
10
8
Sea temperature, °C
Alicante
15
14
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Dublin
9
8
8
9
11
13
15
15
15
13
12
11
Rainfall, mm
Alicante
21
18
25
34
21
8
3
12
52
32
34
23
Dublin
62
52
52
55
58
65
62
74
61
78
83
72
Daylight, hours per day
Alicante
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Dublin
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Alicante
6
6
8
8
10
10
11
10
8
7
6
6
Dublin
2
3
4
5
6
6
5
5
4
3
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Alicante: 1991-2020 normals, Alicante (2.8 km from centre). Dublin: 1991-2020 normals, Dublin Airport (9.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAlicanteDublin
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€46-56
ALC · 10 km
1 h 10 m
€33-43
DUB · 9 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 40 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 35 m
€150-169
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
1 h 35 m
€80-139
DUB · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€85-109
ALC · 10 km
1 h 35 m
€43-47
DUB · 9 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 25 m
€102-119
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
1 h 35 m
€60-123
1 stop
DUB · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
€62-93
ALC · 10 km
2 h 25 m
€71-105
DUB · 9 km
BirminghamBHX
2 h 30 m
€69-172
ALC · 10 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
BristolBRS
2 h 25 m
€66-103
ALC · 10 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 50 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
3 h 30 m
no fares
DUB · 9 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 127 km
6 h 15 m
no fares
DUB · 9 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

MeasureAlicanteDublin
Official languageSpanishEnglish, Irish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation3 m20 m
Main airportAlicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ALC)10 km from centre124 non-stop destinationsDublin Airport (DUB)9 km from centre201 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAlicanteDublin
City population366,221592,713
People per km²1,8195,154
Museums within 10 km840
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre5274
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

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