VacationSelector

Alicante or Heidelberg?

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 year-round weather with your weighting.

Heidelberg
45
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

AlicanteHeidelberg
Beaches & swimming. Alicante leads by 77 points.77
AlicanteHeidelberg
Score770
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km336
Coast distance1 km406 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Alicante leads by 19 points.19
AlicanteHeidelberg
Score6647
Restaurants within 2 km of centre867269
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3126
Museums & heritage. Heidelberg leads by 17 points.17
AlicanteHeidelberg
Score4259
Museums within 10 km1454
Museums within 2 km of centre1123
Share of museums within 2 km %7943
Unesco sites within 50 km24
Nightlife. Alicante leads by 24 points.24
AlicanteHeidelberg
Score5127
Drinking venues within 4 km591201
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre488169
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8384
Nightclubs within 4 km548
Nature & day trips. Heidelberg leads by 34 points.34
AlicanteHeidelberg
Score4074
Protected land share 50 km %752
Landscape blanket share 50 km %022
Land share of disc %59100
Park area within 2 km60 hectares20 hectares
Good for families. Heidelberg leads by 1 points.1
AlicanteHeidelberg
Score4243
Tourist attractions within 2 km1329
Park area within 2 km60 hectares20 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Heidelberg leads by 10 points.10
AlicanteHeidelberg
Score2636
Notable places within 2 km1831
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Alicante leads by 11 points.11
AlicanteHeidelberg
Score7160
Price level global60.875.9
Daily budget€122€163
Year-round weather. Alicante leads by 26 points.26
AlicanteHeidelberg
Score8761
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 31.1 °C5.2 °C to 25.8 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 52 mm45 mm to 80 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
Heidelberg
5
7
12
17
21
24
26
26
21
15
9
6
Sea temperature, °C
Alicante
15
14
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Heidelberg
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Alicante
21
18
25
34
21
8
3
12
52
32
34
23
Heidelberg
46
46
53
45
69
66
80
67
56
61
62
64
Daylight, hours per day
Alicante
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Heidelberg
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Alicante
6
6
8
8
10
10
11
10
8
7
6
6
Heidelberg
2
3
4
6
7
7
8
7
6
4
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Alicante: 1991-2020 normals, Alicante (2.8 km from centre). Heidelberg: 1991-2020 normals, Heidelberg (4.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAlicanteHeidelberg
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€46-56
ALC · 10 km
1 h 25 m
€74-124
FRA · 69 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 25 m
€102-119
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
FRA · 69 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
€62-93
ALC · 10 km
1 h 55 m
€102-123
FRA · 69 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 0 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
FRA · 69 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 40 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
FRA · 69 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 35 m
€150-169
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
1 h 5 m
€221-263
1 stop
FRA · 69 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€85-109
ALC · 10 km
1 h 10 m
€139-148
FRA · 69 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€72-86
ALC · 10 km
2 h 20 m
€145-238
1 stop
FRA · 69 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 50 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
3 h 30 m
no fares
HHN · 120 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 127 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
FRA · 69 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

MeasureAlicanteHeidelberg
Official languageSpanishGerman
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 m114 m
Main airportAlicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ALC)10 km from centre124 non-stop destinationsFrankfurt Main Airport (FRA)69 km from centre293 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureAlicanteHeidelberg
City population366,221162,960
People per km²1,8191,496
Museums within 10 km817
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km24
Distinct cuisines in the centre5245
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 Heidelberg 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.