VacationSelector

Barcelona or Tirana?

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 museums & heritage with your weighting.

Tirana
51
match

Wins on value for money 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.

BarcelonaTirana
Beaches & swimming. Barcelona leads by 48 points.48
BarcelonaTirana
Score6517
Swim season months35
Beaches 10 km200
Coast distance2 km26 km
Water distance2 km26 km
Places to eat. Barcelona leads by 35 points.35
BarcelonaTirana
Score9055
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,786572
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4122
Museums & heritage. Barcelona leads by 43 points.43
BarcelonaTirana
Score6825
Museums within 10 km10512
Museums within 2 km of centre498
Share of museums within 2 km %4767
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Barcelona leads by 24 points.24
BarcelonaTirana
Score8258
Drinking venues within 4 km2,711945
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,641683
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6172
Nightclubs within 4 km24529
Nature & day trips. Barcelona leads by 1 points.1
BarcelonaTirana
Score5049
Protected land share 50 km %1011
Landscape blanket share 50 km %03
Land share of disc %5183
Park area within 2 km49 hectares147 hectares
Good for families. Barcelona leads by 13 points.13
BarcelonaTirana
Score6552
Tourist attractions within 2 km6021
Park area within 2 km49 hectares147 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km30
Sights concentration. Barcelona leads by 20 points.20
BarcelonaTirana
Score7353
Notable places within 2 km25883
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tirana leads by 13 points.13
BarcelonaTirana
Score7184
Price level global60.842.6
Daily budget€122€76
Year-round weather. Barcelona leads by 11 points.11
BarcelonaTirana
Score7867
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 28.9 °C11.6 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 83 mm43 mm to 172 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
Tirana
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Barcelona
14
13
13
14
17
21
24
25
24
21
17
15
Tirana
15
14
14
16
19
23
24
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Barcelona
41
32
40
47
44
27
27
51
83
82
45
36
Tirana
143
117
116
103
84
66
43
55
78
114
172
148
Daylight, hours per day
Barcelona
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Tirana
10
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
Tirana
4
4
5
6
9
10
12
11
9
7
4
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Barcelona: 1991-2020 normals, Barcelona / Aeropuerto (14.4 km from centre). Tirana: 1961-1990 normals, Tirana (3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBarcelonaTirana
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€79-101
BCN · 13 km
2 h 30 m
€73-102
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€37-96
BCN · 13 km
2 h 55 m
€62-138
TIA · 13 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 30 m
€33-92
BCN · 13 km
1 h 50 m
€33-74
TIA · 13 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
2 h 50 m
€66-190
BCN · 13 km
2 h 5 m
€68-80
TIA · 13 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 40 m
€54-89
BCN · 13 km
1 h 25 m
€30-52
TIA · 13 km
PalmaPMI
55 m
€40-57
BCN · 13 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
TIA · 13 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 10 m
€132-158
BCN · 13 km
2 h 35 m
€169-220
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
€114-118
BCN · 13 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
TIA · 13 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 20 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
2 h 40 m
€222-261
TIA · 13 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
8 h 15 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
TIA · 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

MeasureBarcelonaTirana
Official languageSpanishAlbanian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Lek (ALL)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation9 m110 m
Main airportJosep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN)13 km from centre229 non-stop destinationsTirana International Airport Mother Teresa (TIA)13 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBarcelonaTirana
City population1,731,649389,323
People per km²17,0949,314
Museums within 10 km9511
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre12846
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months5 months

Where else could you go?

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