VacationSelector

Alicante or Toledo?

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 places to eat with your weighting.

Toledo
40
match

Wins on sights concentration and good for families with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Alicante if the sea is the point: 33 beaches nearby, five months warm enough to swim, and far more places to eat and drink once you are off the sand.

Choose Toledo if you would rather walk between monuments: about three times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, more museums and more attractions aimed at families, with quiet evenings.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

AlicanteToledo
Beaches & swimming. Alicante leads by 77 points.77
AlicanteToledo
Score770
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km331
Coast distance1 km320 km
Water distance1 km—
Places to eat. Alicante leads by 42 points.42
AlicanteToledo
Score6624
Restaurants within 2 km of centre867249
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km317
Museums & heritage. Toledo leads by 4 points.4
AlicanteToledo
Score4246
Museums within 10 km1419
Museums within 2 km of centre1119
Share of museums within 2 km %79100
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Alicante leads by 34 points.34
AlicanteToledo
Score5117
Drinking venues within 4 km591120
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre488115
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8396
Nightclubs within 4 km545
Nature & day trips. Alicante leads by 12 points.12
AlicanteToledo
Score4028
Protected land share 50 km %74
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %59100
Park area within 2 km60 hectares59 hectares
Good for families. Toledo leads by 12 points.12
AlicanteToledo
Score4254
Tourist attractions within 2 km1332
Park area within 2 km60 hectares59 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Toledo leads by 20 points.20
AlicanteToledo
Score2646
Notable places within 2 km1855
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Alicante and Toledo are level on 71.
AlicanteToledo
Score7171
Price level global60.860.8
Daily budget€122€122
Year-round weather. Alicante leads by 13 points.13
AlicanteToledo
Score8774
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 31.1 °C11.9 °C to 35.1 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 52 mm6 mm to 49 mm
Dry months1111
0255075100

Where they differ

Alicante is the coastal option: 33 beaches nearby against Toledo's 1, and five months when the sea sits at 21°C or more. It has around three times as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens, plus many times as many bars and clubs, most of them central.

Toledo is the denser place to walk: about three times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, and roughly twice as many tourist attractions near it, along with somewhat more museums.

Where they are alike

Museums and heritage is where they meet most closely. Toledo holds somewhat more museums, but both put you within day-trip reach of 2 UNESCO-listed places, so either works as a base for several days of sightseeing.

Beyond that, both have comparable park space near the centre and 1 theme park within reach, and each records close to 2,980 hours of sunshine a year with 11 months at 40mm of rain or less.

Which traveller are you?

If swimming is the point of the trip, Alicante is the only option here: 33 beaches nearby and sea reaching 26°C in August, with the eating and drinking to match once you are off the sand.

A traveller who wants monuments in walking order should take Toledo, with roughly three times as many notable places close to the centre and somewhat more museums. Expect quiet evenings and far fewer places to eat.

Families lean to Toledo, which has about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre, though July and August highs of 35°C argue for spring. Both have 1 theme park within reach and similar park space.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figure is a national price level shared by both, so it says nothing about which of these two costs more; the €122 daily budget beside it is one national estimate, not a measurement of either city. Treat prices as something to check locally.

Alicante's beach standing rests on the same warm months that draw the crowds, and September, with sea still at 25°C, is also its wettest at 52mm. Toledo's warmer year reads well until you meet 35°C in July, and its one beach makes no swimming summer at all.

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
Toledo
12
14
18
21
25
31
35
35
29
23
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Alicante
15
14
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Toledo
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Alicante
21
18
25
34
21
8
3
12
52
32
34
23
Toledo
26
25
33
40
39
19
6
9
21
49
38
35
Daylight, hours per day
Alicante
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Toledo
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
Toledo
5
6
7
8
10
11
13
12
9
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). Toledo: 1991-2020 normals, Toledo (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Alicante is at its best in late spring and early summer, with highs of 24-28°C in May and June and the sea climbing past 22°C. July is dry at 3mm and hot at 30°C, while September brings 52mm, the year's heaviest rain, despite sea at 25°C.

Toledo suits May and September, when highs sit at 25°C and 29°C. July and August reach 35°C, and October is its wettest month at 49mm; January stays at 12°C.

Getting there

Flying fromAlicanteToledo
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€46-56
ALC · 10 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 80 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€85-109
ALC · 10 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 80 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
€62-93
ALC · 10 km
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 80 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 0 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
1 h 20 m
€56-238
MAD · 80 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 25 m
€102-119
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
2 h 15 m
€99-166
MAD · 80 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 35 m
€150-169
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 80 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 40 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
MAD · 80 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
2 h 50 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
2 h 50 m
€109-153
MAD · 80 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 50 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 80 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 127 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
MAD · 80 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

MeasureAlicanteToledo
Official languageSpanishSpanish
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 m523 m
Main airportAlicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ALC)10 km from centre124 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)80 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAlicanteToledo
City population366,22187,216
People per km²1,819376
Museums within 10 km813
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre5213
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 Toledo 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.