VacationSelector

Alicante or Zadar?

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 places to eat and nightlife with your weighting.

Zadar
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.

AlicanteZadar
Beaches & swimming. Alicante leads by 4 points.4
AlicanteZadar
Score7773
Swim season months54
Beaches 10 km3349
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Alicante leads by 41 points.41
AlicanteZadar
Score6625
Restaurants within 2 km of centre867143
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3111
Museums & heritage. Alicante leads by 9 points.9
AlicanteZadar
Score4233
Museums within 10 km148
Museums within 2 km of centre118
Share of museums within 2 km %79100
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Alicante leads by 26 points.26
AlicanteZadar
Score5125
Drinking venues within 4 km591194
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre488139
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8372
Nightclubs within 4 km544
Nature & day trips. Zadar leads by 15 points.15
AlicanteZadar
Score4055
Protected land share 50 km %712
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5947
Park area within 2 km60 hectares30 hectares
Good for families. Alicante leads by 11 points.11
AlicanteZadar
Score4231
Tourist attractions within 2 km139
Park area within 2 km60 hectares30 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Zadar leads by 5 points.5
AlicanteZadar
Score2631
Notable places within 2 km1823
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Zadar leads by 9 points.9
AlicanteZadar
Score7180
Price level global60.848.5
Daily budget€122€138
Year-round weather. Alicante leads by 18 points.18
AlicanteZadar
Score8769
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 31.1 °C10.4 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 52 mm25 mm to 117 mm
Dry months112
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
Zadar
10
11
15
19
23
28
31
31
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Alicante
15
14
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Zadar
14
13
13
14
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Alicante
21
18
25
34
21
8
3
12
52
32
34
23
Zadar
73
64
59
62
58
49
25
32
82
80
117
99
Daylight, hours per day
Alicante
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Zadar
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Alicante
6
6
8
8
10
10
11
10
8
7
6
6
Zadar
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Alicante: 1991-2020 normals, Alicante (2.8 km from centre). Zadar: 1999-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Zadar / Zemunik (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAlicanteZadar
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€46-56
ALC · 10 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ZAD · 10 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 35 m
€150-169
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
2 h 10 m
€186-201
1 stop
SPU · 107 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 40 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€85-109
ALC · 10 km
2 h 5 m
€169-225
SPU · 107 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 0 m
€102-136
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
1 h 5 m
€294
SPU · 107 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
3 h 50 m
€96-151
ALC · 10 km
2 h 45 m
€123-165
1 stop
SPU · 107 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 25 m
€102-119
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
ZAD · 10 km
OsloOSL, TRF
3 h 40 m
€122-139
ALC · 10 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
DublinDUB
2 h 45 m
€98-122
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
€62-83
ALC · 10 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
ZAD · 10 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

MeasureAlicanteZadar
Official languageSpanishCroatian
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 m5 m
Main airportAlicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ALC)10 km from centre124 non-stop destinationsZadar Airport (ZAD)10 km from centre67 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureAlicanteZadar
City population366,22170,779
People per km²1,819
Museums within 10 km81
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre5217
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months4 months

Where else could you go?

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