VacationSelector

Bangkok or Barcelona?

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

Your match

Bangkok
62
match

Wins on value for money and nightlife with your weighting.

Barcelona
✓ Best match
71
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration 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.

BangkokBarcelona
Beaches & swimming. Barcelona leads by 25 points.25
BangkokBarcelona
Score4065
Swim season months123
Beaches 10 km020
Coast distance23 km2 km
Water distance23 km2 km
Places to eat. Barcelona leads by 7 points.7
BangkokBarcelona
Score8390
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,9573,786
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2641
Museums & heritage. Barcelona leads by 22 points.22
BangkokBarcelona
Score4668
Museums within 10 km103105
Museums within 2 km of centre3049
Share of museums within 2 km %2947
Unesco sites within 50 km03
Nightlife. Bangkok leads by 1 points.1
BangkokBarcelona
Score8382
Drinking venues within 4 km3,3832,711
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,3961,641
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4161
Nightclubs within 4 km72245
Nature & day trips. Bangkok leads by 1 points.1
BangkokBarcelona
Score5150
Protected land share 50 km %10
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8351
Park area within 2 km42 hectares49 hectares
Good for families. Barcelona leads by 8 points.8
BangkokBarcelona
Score5765
Tourist attractions within 2 km3160
Park area within 2 km42 hectares49 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km43
Sights concentration. Barcelona leads by 25 points.25
BangkokBarcelona
Score4873
Notable places within 2 km62258
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bangkok leads by 22 points.22
BangkokBarcelona
Score9371
Price level global29.760.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Barcelona leads by 22 points.22
BangkokBarcelona
Score5678
Monthly daytime high32.4 °C to 35.8 °C13.9 °C to 28.9 °C
Monthly rainfall7 mm to 331 mm27 mm to 83 mm
Dry months35
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
Bangkok
33
34
35
36
35
34
34
33
33
33
33
32
Barcelona
14
14
16
19
22
26
28
29
26
22
18
15
Sea temperature, °C
Bangkok
27
28
29
30
31
30
30
30
29
29
29
28
Barcelona
14
13
13
14
17
21
24
25
24
21
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Bangkok
18
22
43
92
221
187
184
227
331
276
42
7
Barcelona
41
32
40
47
44
27
27
51
83
82
45
36
Daylight, hours per day
Bangkok
11
12
12
12
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
Barcelona
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bangkok
8
8
8
8
7
5
5
4
4
5
7
8
Barcelona
5
5
7
8
8
9
10
9
7
6
4
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bangkok: 1991-2020 normals, Bangkok (5.7 km from centre). Barcelona: 1991-2020 normals, Barcelona / Aeropuerto (14.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBangkokBarcelona
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 55 m
€438-523
BKK · 26 km
2 h 0 m
€37-96
BCN · 13 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 45 m
no fares
BKK · 26 km
1 h 40 m
€79-101
BCN · 13 km
MadridMAD
12 h 40 m
no fares
BKK · 26 km
1 h 15 m
€114-118
BCN · 13 km
SeoulICN, GMP
5 h 0 m
€175-251
BKK · 26 km
11 h 55 m
€459-799
2 stops
BCN · 13 km
RomeFCO, CIA
11 h 5 m
no fares
BKK · 26 km
1 h 40 m
€54-89
BCN · 13 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
11 h 20 m
no fares
BKK · 26 km
1 h 30 m
€33-92
BCN · 13 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 30 m
no fares
BKK · 26 km
2 h 10 m
€132-158
BCN · 13 km
Hong KongHKG
2 h 40 m
€175-181
BKK · 26 km
12 h 30 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€409-425
DMK · 21 km
6 h 45 m
€369-388
BCN · 13 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
16 h 20 m
€646-679
1 stop
BKK · 26 km
12 h 5 m
no fares
BCN · 13 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

MeasureBangkokBarcelona
Official languageThaiSpanish
CurrencyBaht (THB)Euro (EUR)
SocketsABCF220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+7UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 191, ambulance 1669, fire 199112
Elevation2 m9 m
Main airportSuvarnabhumi Airport (BKK)26 km from centre142 non-stop destinationsJosep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN)13 km from centre229 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBangkokBarcelona
City population5,676,6481,731,649
People per km²3,61917,094
Museums within 10 km5995
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km03
Distinct cuisines in the centre91128
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bangkok or Barcelona 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). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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.

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.