VacationSelector

Barcelona or Paphos?

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 sights concentration and nightlife with your weighting.

Paphos
46
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

BarcelonaPaphos
Beaches & swimming. Paphos leads by 14 points.14
BarcelonaPaphos
Score6579
Swim season months36
Beaches 10 km2027
Coast distance2 km1 km
Water distance2 km1 km
Places to eat. Barcelona leads by 46 points.46
BarcelonaPaphos
Score9044
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,786251
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4122
Museums & heritage. Barcelona leads by 46 points.46
BarcelonaPaphos
Score6822
Museums within 10 km1058
Museums within 2 km of centre493
Share of museums within 2 km %4738
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Barcelona leads by 52 points.52
BarcelonaPaphos
Score8230
Drinking venues within 4 km2,711224
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,641161
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6172
Nightclubs within 4 km24511
Nature & day trips. Barcelona leads by 27 points.27
BarcelonaPaphos
Score5023
Protected land share 50 km %102
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5133
Park area within 2 km49 hectares27 hectares
Good for families. Barcelona leads by 23 points.23
BarcelonaPaphos
Score6542
Tourist attractions within 2 km6030
Park area within 2 km49 hectares27 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km30
Sights concentration. Barcelona leads by 54 points.54
BarcelonaPaphos
Score7319
Notable places within 2 km25812
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Barcelona leads by 1 points.1
BarcelonaPaphos
Score7170
Price level global60.861.4
Daily budget€122€129
Year-round weather. Paphos leads by 8 points.8
BarcelonaPaphos
Score7886
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 28.9 °C17 °C to 30.8 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 83 mm0 mm to 98 mm
Dry months58
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
Paphos
17
17
19
21
25
28
30
31
29
27
23
19
Sea temperature, °C
Barcelona
14
13
13
14
17
21
24
25
24
21
17
15
Paphos
17
17
17
18
21
24
27
28
27
25
22
19
Rainfall, mm
Barcelona
41
32
40
47
44
27
27
51
83
82
45
36
Paphos
81
47
29
17
10
2
1
0
5
14
42
98
Daylight, hours per day
Barcelona
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Paphos
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Barcelona
5
5
7
8
8
9
10
9
7
6
4
4
Paphos
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Barcelona: 1991-2020 normals, Barcelona / Aeropuerto (14.4 km from centre). Paphos: 1991-2020 normals, Paphos Airport (8.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBarcelonaPaphos
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€37-96
BCN · 13 km
4 h 25 m
€125-167
PFO · 8 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 15 m
€71-76
BCN · 13 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€79-101
BCN · 13 km
4 h 5 m
€197-331
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 20 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
1 h 5 m
€149-173
PFO · 8 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 10 m
€132-158
BCN · 13 km
4 h 5 m
€253-340
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 40 m
€54-89
BCN · 13 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 30 m
€33-92
BCN · 13 km
3 h 25 m
€125-152
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
ThessalonikiSKG
2 h 45 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
1 h 55 m
€96-218
PFO · 8 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 15 m
€100-142
1 stop
BCN · 13 km
3 h 0 m
€206-323
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 55 m
€77-116
BCN · 13 km
4 h 5 m
€176-392
2 stops
PFO · 8 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

MeasureBarcelonaPaphos
Official languageSpanishTurkish, Greek, Modern Greek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG240 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation9 m72 m
Main airportJosep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN)13 km from centre229 non-stop destinationsPaphos International Airport (PFO)8 km from centre57 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days17 days

By the numbers

MeasureBarcelonaPaphos
City population1,731,64935,961
People per km²17,0941,987
Museums within 10 km954
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre12836
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months6 months

Where else could you go?

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