VacationSelector

Barcelona or Faro?

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

Your match

Barcelona
✓ Best match
71
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration with your weighting.

Faro
47
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather 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.

BarcelonaFaro
Beaches & swimming. Barcelona leads by 4 points.4
BarcelonaFaro
Score6561
Swim season months33
Beaches 10 km2013
Coast distance2 km0 km
Water distance2 km0 km
Places to eat. Barcelona leads by 46 points.46
BarcelonaFaro
Score9044
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,786255
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4122
Museums & heritage. Barcelona leads by 46 points.46
BarcelonaFaro
Score6822
Museums within 10 km1059
Museums within 2 km of centre498
Share of museums within 2 km %4789
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Barcelona leads by 61 points.61
BarcelonaFaro
Score8221
Drinking venues within 4 km2,711143
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,641123
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6186
Nightclubs within 4 km2458
Nature & day trips. Faro leads by 7 points.7
BarcelonaFaro
Score5057
Protected land share 50 km %1011
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5142
Park area within 2 km49 hectares34 hectares
Good for families. Barcelona leads by 29 points.29
BarcelonaFaro
Score6536
Tourist attractions within 2 km6010
Park area within 2 km49 hectares34 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Barcelona leads by 51 points.51
BarcelonaFaro
Score7322
Notable places within 2 km25814
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Faro leads by 3 points.3
BarcelonaFaro
Score7174
Price level global60.855.9
Daily budget€122€109
Year-round weather. Faro leads by 5 points.5
BarcelonaFaro
Score7883
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 28.9 °C16.3 °C to 29 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 83 mm1 mm to 102 mm
Dry months56
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
Barcelona
14
14
16
19
22
26
28
29
26
22
18
15
Faro
16
17
19
21
24
27
29
29
26
23
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Barcelona
14
13
13
14
17
21
24
25
24
21
17
15
Faro
17
16
16
17
18
20
21
22
21
21
19
17
Rainfall, mm
Barcelona
41
32
40
47
44
27
27
51
83
82
45
36
Faro
55
39
44
40
23
6
1
5
28
57
75
102
Daylight, hours per day
Barcelona
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Faro
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Barcelona
5
5
7
8
8
9
10
9
7
6
4
4
Faro
6
6
8
9
10
12
12
11
9
8
6
6

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Barcelona: 1991-2020 normals, Barcelona / Aeropuerto (14.4 km from centre). Faro: 1991-2020 normals, Faro / Aeroporto (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBarcelonaFaro
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€37-96
BCN · 13 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€79-101
BCN · 13 km
2 h 30 m
€126-204
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
DublinDUB
2 h 25 m
€79-116
BCN · 13 km
2 h 50 m
€75-114
FAO · 3 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 10 m
€132-158
BCN · 13 km
3 h 0 m
€144-189
1 stop
FAO · 3 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 15 m
€71-76
BCN · 13 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 50 m
€46-94
BCN · 13 km
55 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
€114-118
BCN · 13 km
1 h 20 m
€46-52
FAO · 3 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 55 m
€77-116
BCN · 13 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 55 m
€562-701
BCN · 13 km
7 h 15 m
no fares
FAO · 3 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 20 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
FAO · 3 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

MeasureBarcelonaFaro
Official languageSpanishPortuguese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation9 m10 m
Main airportJosep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN)13 km from centre229 non-stop destinationsFaro - Gago Coutinho International Airport (FAO)3 km from centre91 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBarcelonaFaro
City population1,731,64964,560
People per km²17,094319
Museums within 10 km952
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre12834
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months3 months

Where else could you go?

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