VacationSelector

Barcelona or Monaco?

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 places to eat with your weighting.

Monaco
48
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and 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.

BarcelonaMonaco
Beaches & swimming. Monaco leads by 8 points.8
BarcelonaMonaco
Score6573
Swim season months34
Beaches 10 km2050
Coast distance2 km0 km
Water distance2 km0 km
Places to eat. Barcelona leads by 51 points.51
BarcelonaMonaco
Score9039
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,786269
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4116
Museums & heritage. Barcelona leads by 30 points.30
BarcelonaMonaco
Score6838
Museums within 10 km10523
Museums within 2 km of centre498
Share of museums within 2 km %4735
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Barcelona leads by 74 points.74
BarcelonaMonaco
Score828
Drinking venues within 4 km2,71169
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,64163
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6191
Nightclubs within 4 km2457
Nature & day trips. Monaco leads by 3 points.3
BarcelonaMonaco
Score5053
Protected land share 50 km %1024
Landscape blanket share 50 km %017
Land share of disc %5154
Park area within 2 km49 hectares15 hectares
Good for families. Barcelona leads by 30 points.30
BarcelonaMonaco
Score6535
Tourist attractions within 2 km6014
Park area within 2 km49 hectares15 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km33
Sights concentration. Barcelona leads by 9 points.9
BarcelonaMonaco
Score7364
Notable places within 2 km258154
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for moneyNo source publishes a price level for Monaco.
Year-round weather. Barcelona leads by 4 points.4
BarcelonaMonaco
Score7874
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 28.9 °C13.3 °C to 27.9 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 83 mm13 mm to 138 mm
Dry months53
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
Monaco
13
14
15
17
21
25
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Barcelona
14
13
13
14
17
21
24
25
24
21
17
15
Monaco
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
22
20
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Barcelona
41
32
40
47
44
27
27
51
83
82
45
36
Monaco
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
Daylight, hours per day
Barcelona
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Monaco
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Barcelona
5
5
7
8
8
9
10
9
7
6
4
4
Monaco
5
6
7
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Barcelona: 1991-2020 normals, Barcelona / Aeropuerto (14.4 km from centre). Monaco: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (19.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBarcelonaMonaco
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€37-96
BCN · 13 km
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€79-101
BCN · 13 km
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 18 km
PalmaPMI
55 m
€40-57
BCN · 13 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
NCE · 18 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 40 m
€54-89
BCN · 13 km
1 h 10 m
€69-133
NCE · 18 km
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
€114-118
BCN · 13 km
1 h 50 m
€137-165
NCE · 18 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 10 m
€132-158
BCN · 13 km
1 h 50 m
€170-248
NCE · 18 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 55 m
€77-116
BCN · 13 km
1 h 40 m
€155-228
1 stop
NCE · 18 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 50 m
€46-94
BCN · 13 km
2 h 25 m
€153-221
1 stop
NCE · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 55 m
€562-701
BCN · 13 km
8 h 10 m
€666-799
1 stop
NCE · 18 km
TunisTUN
1 h 40 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
1 h 35 m
€148-281
NCE · 18 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

MeasureBarcelonaMonaco
Official languageSpanishFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCEF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation9 m68 m
Main airportJosep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN)13 km from centre229 non-stop destinationsNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)18 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBarcelonaMonaco
City population1,731,64938,857
People per km²17,09418,503
Museums within 10 km9514
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre12829
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Barcelona or Monaco 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.