VacationSelector

Alicante or Palermo?

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 places to eat and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Palermo
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.

AlicantePalermo
Beaches & swimming. Alicante leads by 10 points.10
AlicantePalermo
Score7767
Swim season months55
Beaches 10 km3313
Coast distance1 km1 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. Alicante leads by 16 points.16
AlicantePalermo
Score6650
Restaurants within 2 km of centre867807
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3113
Museums & heritage. Palermo leads by 8 points.8
AlicantePalermo
Score4250
Museums within 10 km1432
Museums within 2 km of centre1126
Share of museums within 2 km %7981
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Palermo leads by 2 points.2
AlicantePalermo
Score5153
Drinking venues within 4 km591799
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre488515
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8364
Nightclubs within 4 km5416
Nature & day trips. Alicante leads by 4 points.4
AlicantePalermo
Score4036
Protected land share 50 km %74
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5945
Park area within 2 km60 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Alicante leads by 1 points.1
AlicantePalermo
Score4241
Tourist attractions within 2 km1316
Park area within 2 km60 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Palermo leads by 31 points.31
AlicantePalermo
Score2657
Notable places within 2 km18104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Alicante leads by 3 points.3
AlicantePalermo
Score7168
Price level global60.864.9
Daily budget€122€155
Year-round weather. Alicante leads by 10 points.10
AlicantePalermo
Score8777
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 31.1 °C12.6 °C to 27.8 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 52 mm4 mm to 71 mm
Dry months117
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
Palermo
13
13
14
16
20
24
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Alicante
15
14
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Palermo
15
14
15
16
19
22
26
27
25
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Alicante
21
18
25
34
21
8
3
12
52
32
34
23
Palermo
48
45
35
35
18
9
4
11
37
67
71
69
Daylight, hours per day
Alicante
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Palermo
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
Palermo
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
8
7
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Alicante: 1991-2020 normals, Alicante (2.8 km from centre). Palermo: 1961-1990 normals, Ustica (66.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAlicantePalermo
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
€62-83
ALC · 10 km
1 h 45 m
€31-110
PMO · 25 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 0 m
€102-136
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
1 h 10 m
€40-52
PMO · 25 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€46-56
ALC · 10 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 25 m
€102-119
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
2 h 30 m
€106-165
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€85-109
ALC · 10 km
2 h 25 m
€101-135
PMO · 25 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 40 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
TPS · 80 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
€62-93
ALC · 10 km
1 h 50 m
€49-107
PMO · 25 km
NaplesNAP
2 h 10 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
1 h 0 m
€42-84
PMO · 25 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 35 m
€150-169
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
BolognaBLQ
2 h 0 m
€92-98
1 stop
VLC · 127 km
1 h 30 m
€28-65
PMO · 25 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

MeasureAlicantePalermo
Official languageSpanishItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation3 m14 m
Main airportAlicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ALC)10 km from centre124 non-stop destinationsFalcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAlicantePalermo
City population366,221630,167
People per km²1,8193,924
Museums within 10 km842
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre5233
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months5 months

Where else could you go?

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