VacationSelector

Alicante or Faro?

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 nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Faro
47
match

Wins on nature & day trips and value for money 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.

AlicanteFaro
Beaches & swimming. Alicante leads by 16 points.16
AlicanteFaro
Score7761
Swim season months53
Beaches 10 km3313
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Alicante leads by 22 points.22
AlicanteFaro
Score6644
Restaurants within 2 km of centre867255
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3122
Museums & heritage. Alicante leads by 20 points.20
AlicanteFaro
Score4222
Museums within 10 km149
Museums within 2 km of centre118
Share of museums within 2 km %7989
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Alicante leads by 30 points.30
AlicanteFaro
Score5121
Drinking venues within 4 km591143
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre488123
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8386
Nightclubs within 4 km548
Nature & day trips. Faro leads by 17 points.17
AlicanteFaro
Score4057
Protected land share 50 km %711
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5942
Park area within 2 km60 hectares34 hectares
Good for families. Alicante leads by 6 points.6
AlicanteFaro
Score4236
Tourist attractions within 2 km1310
Park area within 2 km60 hectares34 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Alicante leads by 4 points.4
AlicanteFaro
Score2622
Notable places within 2 km1814
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Faro leads by 3 points.3
AlicanteFaro
Score7174
Price level global60.855.9
Daily budget€122€109
Year-round weather. Alicante leads by 4 points.4
AlicanteFaro
Score8783
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 31.1 °C16.3 °C to 29 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 52 mm1 mm to 102 mm
Dry months116
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
Faro
16
17
19
21
24
27
29
29
26
23
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Alicante
15
14
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Faro
17
16
16
17
18
20
21
22
21
21
19
17
Rainfall, mm
Alicante
21
18
25
34
21
8
3
12
52
32
34
23
Faro
55
39
44
40
23
6
1
5
28
57
75
102
Daylight, hours per day
Alicante
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Faro
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Alicante
6
6
8
8
10
10
11
10
8
7
6
6
Faro
6
6
8
9
10
12
12
11
9
8
6
6

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

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAlicanteFaro
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€46-56
ALC · 10 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 40 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
DublinDUB
2 h 45 m
€98-122
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
2 h 50 m
€75-114
FAO · 3 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 25 m
€102-119
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
BristolBRS
2 h 25 m
€66-103
ALC · 10 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€85-109
ALC · 10 km
2 h 30 m
€126-204
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 35 m
€150-169
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
3 h 0 m
€144-189
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
BirminghamBHX
2 h 30 m
€69-172
ALC · 10 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
EindhovenEIN
2 h 30 m
€153-216
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 50 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
FAO · 3 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

MeasureAlicanteFaro
Official languageSpanishPortuguese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation3 m10 m
Main airportAlicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ALC)10 km from centre124 non-stop destinationsFaro - Gago Coutinho International Airport (FAO)3 km from centre91 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureAlicanteFaro
City population366,22164,560
People per km²1,819319
Museums within 10 km82
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre5234
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 Faro 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.