VacationSelector

Alicante or Thessaloniki?

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

Your match

Alicante
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.

Thessaloniki
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on sights concentration and nature & day trips 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.

AlicanteThessaloniki
Beaches & swimming. Alicante leads by 22 points.22
AlicanteThessaloniki
Score7755
Swim season months55
Beaches 10 km334
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Alicante leads by 16 points.16
AlicanteThessaloniki
Score6650
Restaurants within 2 km of centre867640
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3115
Museums & heritage. Thessaloniki leads by 7 points.7
AlicanteThessaloniki
Score4249
Museums within 10 km1434
Museums within 2 km of centre1122
Share of museums within 2 km %7965
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Thessaloniki leads by 16 points.16
AlicanteThessaloniki
Score5167
Drinking venues within 4 km5911,407
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre488805
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8357
Nightclubs within 4 km5461
Nature & day trips. Thessaloniki leads by 25 points.25
AlicanteThessaloniki
Score4065
Protected land share 50 km %725
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5983
Park area within 2 km60 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Alicante leads by 1 points.1
AlicanteThessaloniki
Score4241
Tourist attractions within 2 km1316
Park area within 2 km60 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Thessaloniki leads by 30 points.30
AlicanteThessaloniki
Score2656
Notable places within 2 km1898
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Thessaloniki leads by 3 points.3
AlicanteThessaloniki
Score7174
Price level global60.855.8
Daily budget€122€125
Year-round weather. Alicante leads by 15 points.15
AlicanteThessaloniki
Score8772
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 31.1 °C9.7 °C to 32.1 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 52 mm21 mm to 56 mm
Dry months119
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
Thessaloniki
10
11
15
19
25
30
32
32
27
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Alicante
15
14
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Thessaloniki
14
13
13
15
19
23
26
27
25
21
18
15
Rainfall, mm
Alicante
21
18
25
34
21
8
3
12
52
32
34
23
Thessaloniki
35
32
38
36
44
30
23
21
33
41
38
56
Daylight, hours per day
Alicante
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Thessaloniki
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Alicante
6
6
8
8
10
10
11
10
8
7
6
6
Thessaloniki
4
4
6
6
9
11
11
10
8
6
4
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Alicante: 1991-2020 normals, Alicante (2.8 km from centre). Thessaloniki: 1991-2020 normals, Thessaloniki Airport (14 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAlicanteThessaloniki
AthensATH
3 h 10 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
1 h 0 m
€97-118
SKG · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€46-56
ALC · 10 km
3 h 15 m
€95-156
SKG · 14 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 25 m
€102-119
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
2 h 50 m
€155-238
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 40 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 35 m
€150-169
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
2 h 55 m
€225-285
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
2 h 30 m
€130-152
ALC · 10 km
2 h 40 m
€127-199
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
€62-93
ALC · 10 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
3 h 50 m
€96-151
ALC · 10 km
3 h 10 m
€138-200
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€85-109
ALC · 10 km
2 h 50 m
€98-154
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
MunichMUC
2 h 25 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
2 h 10 m
€188-242
1 stop
SKG · 14 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

MeasureAlicanteThessaloniki
Official languageSpanishGreek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation3 m6 m
Main airportAlicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ALC)10 km from centre124 non-stop destinationsThessaloniki Macedonia International Airport (SKG)14 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureAlicanteThessaloniki
City population366,221309,617
People per km²1,81916,042
Museums within 10 km831
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre5245
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 Thessaloniki 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.