VacationSelector

Barcelona or Maastricht?

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 beaches & swimming and nightlife with your weighting.

Maastricht
41
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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.

BarcelonaMaastricht
Beaches & swimming. Barcelona leads by 65 points.65
BarcelonaMaastricht
Score650
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km206
Coast distance2 km118 km
Water distance2 km
Places to eat. Barcelona leads by 42 points.42
BarcelonaMaastricht
Score9048
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,786338
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4122
Museums & heritage. Barcelona leads by 15 points.15
BarcelonaMaastricht
Score6853
Museums within 10 km10523
Museums within 2 km of centre4913
Share of museums within 2 km %4757
Unesco sites within 50 km35
Nightlife. Barcelona leads by 52 points.52
BarcelonaMaastricht
Score8230
Drinking venues within 4 km2,711223
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,641182
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6182
Nightclubs within 4 km24513
Nature & day trips. Barcelona leads by 13 points.13
BarcelonaMaastricht
Score5037
Protected land share 50 km %1019
Landscape blanket share 50 km %011
Land share of disc %51100
Park area within 2 km49 hectares33 hectares
Good for families. Barcelona leads by 19 points.19
BarcelonaMaastricht
Score6546
Tourist attractions within 2 km6015
Park area within 2 km49 hectares33 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km35
Sights concentration. Barcelona leads by 37 points.37
BarcelonaMaastricht
Score7336
Notable places within 2 km25832
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Barcelona leads by 13 points.13
BarcelonaMaastricht
Score7158
Price level global60.879.2
Daily budget€122€181
Year-round weather. Barcelona leads by 19 points.19
BarcelonaMaastricht
Score7859
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 28.9 °C5.7 °C to 23.8 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 83 mm41 mm to 84 mm
Dry months50
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
Maastricht
6
7
11
15
19
22
24
24
20
15
10
6
Sea temperature, °C
Barcelona
14
13
13
14
17
21
24
25
24
21
17
15
Maastricht
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Barcelona
41
32
40
47
44
27
27
51
83
82
45
36
Maastricht
64
58
55
41
58
69
73
84
58
65
62
74
Daylight, hours per day
Barcelona
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Maastricht
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Barcelona
5
5
7
8
8
9
10
9
7
6
4
4
Maastricht
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Barcelona: 1991-2020 normals, Barcelona / Aeropuerto (14.4 km from centre). Maastricht: 1991-2020 normals, Maastricht Airport Zuid Limburg (10 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBarcelonaMaastricht
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€37-96
BCN · 13 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EIN · 70 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 55 m
€562-701
BCN · 13 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 40 m
€54-89
BCN · 13 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
EIN · 70 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 30 m
€33-92
BCN · 13 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
EIN · 70 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€79-101
BCN · 13 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 50 m
€46-94
BCN · 13 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
EIN · 70 km
PalmaPMI
55 m
€40-57
BCN · 13 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
LGG · 29 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
11 h 0 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 20 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
EIN · 70 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
11 h 0 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 85 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

MeasureBarcelonaMaastricht
Official languageSpanishDutch
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 or 911
Elevation9 m49 m
Main airportJosep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN)13 km from centre229 non-stop destinationsMaastricht Aachen Airport (MST)9 km from centre5 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBarcelonaMaastricht
City population1,731,649120,227
People per km²17,0942,000
Museums within 10 km9521
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km35
Distinct cuisines in the centre12833
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

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