VacationSelector

Athens or Santiago de Compostela?

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

Your match

Athens
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife with your weighting.

Santiago de Compostela
42
match

Wins on 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.

AthensSantiago de Compostela
Beaches & swimming. Athens leads by 48 points.48
AthensSantiago de Compostela
Score480
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km140
Coast distance6 km26 km
Water distance6 km26 km
Places to eat. Athens leads by 21 points.21
AthensSantiago de Compostela
Score6948
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,431336
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2523
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 29 points.29
AthensSantiago de Compostela
Score7344
Museums within 10 km12216
Museums within 2 km of centre7814
Share of museums within 2 km %6488
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Athens leads by 45 points.45
AthensSantiago de Compostela
Score8136
Drinking venues within 4 km2,718306
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354268
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5088
Nightclubs within 4 km13613
Nature & day trips. Santiago de Compostela leads by 1 points.1
AthensSantiago de Compostela
Score4546
Protected land share 50 km %511
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5092
Park area within 2 km128 hectares109 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 44 points.44
AthensSantiago de Compostela
Score7127
Tourist attractions within 2 km682
Park area within 2 km128 hectares109 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 33 points.33
AthensSantiago de Compostela
Score7542
Notable places within 2 km29144
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 3 points.3
AthensSantiago de Compostela
Score7471
Price level global55.860.8
Daily budget€125€122
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 12 points.12
AthensSantiago de Compostela
Score7462
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C11.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm41 mm to 223 mm
Dry months70
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
Athens
13
14
17
21
27
32
34
35
30
24
19
15
Santiago de Compostela
11
13
15
17
20
23
25
25
23
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Santiago de Compostela
14
13
13
14
15
16
17
17
17
16
15
14
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Santiago de Compostela
217
149
153
136
116
61
41
61
91
208
223
222
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Santiago de Compostela
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Santiago de Compostela
3
4
5
6
7
7
8
8
6
4
3
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Athens: 1991-2020 normals, Athens / Athenai / Pláka (2.2 km from centre). Santiago de Compostela: 1991-2020 normals, Santiago / Labacolla (8.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensSantiago de Compostela
MadridMAD
3 h 30 m
€156-172
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 15 m
€86-122
SCQ · 10 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 55 m
€134-222
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 40 m
€71-184
SCQ · 10 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
SevillaSVQ
3 h 45 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 50 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
MalagaAGP
3 h 35 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
AlicanteALC
3 h 10 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 40 m
€218-283
1 stop
SCQ · 10 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€71-91
ATH · 20 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
MarrakechRAK
4 h 10 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SCQ · 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 2026-09 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

MeasureAthensSantiago de Compostela
Official languageGreekSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation74 m260 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsSantiago-Rosalía de Castro Airport (SCQ)10 km from centre27 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensSantiago de Compostela
City population643,452100,965
People per km²16,499459
Museums within 10 km886
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre8238
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Athens or Santiago de Compostela 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.