VacationSelector

Beijing or Madrid?

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

Your match

Beijing
53
match

Wins on value for money with your weighting.

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nature & day trips and sights concentration 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.

BeijingMadrid
Beaches & swimming. Beijing and Madrid are level on 0.
BeijingMadrid
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km04
Coast distance145 km305 km
Water distance——
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 12 points.12
BeijingMadrid
Score6375
Museums within 10 km9597
Museums within 2 km of centre1559
Share of museums within 2 km %1661
Unesco sites within 50 km64
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 28 points.28
BeijingMadrid
Score3563
Protected land share 50 km %319
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km143 hectares187 hectares
Good for families. Beijing and Madrid are level on 77.
BeijingMadrid
Score7777
Tourist attractions within 2 km4161
Park area within 2 km143 hectares187 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km123
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 25 points.25
BeijingMadrid
Score5075
Notable places within 2 km69288
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Beijing leads by 8 points.8
BeijingMadrid
Score7971
Price level global4960.8
Daily budget—€122
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 6 points.6
BeijingMadrid
Score6672
Monthly daytime high2.2 °C to 31.8 °C10 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 163 mm9 mm to 64 mm
Dry months87
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
Beijing
2
6
13
21
27
31
32
31
27
19
10
4
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Rainfall, mm
Beijing
3
6
9
23
38
74
163
112
56
27
14
3
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Daylight, hours per day
Beijing
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Beijing
6
6
7
8
9
7
6
7
7
7
6
6
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Beijing: 1991-2020 normals, Beijing (11.1 km from centre). Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBeijingMadrid
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
10 h 20 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 15 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
1 h 55 m
€144-160
PKX · 45 km
12 h 45 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
ChengduTFU, CTU
2 h 25 m
€217-253
PKX · 45 km
11 h 30 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
BarcelonaBCN
11 h 0 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
10 h 15 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
SeoulICN, GMP
1 h 45 m
€180-197
PKX · 45 km
12 h 25 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
DohaDOH
7 h 55 m
€595-787
3 stops
PKX · 45 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
21 h 20 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
10 h 30 m
€636-955
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
13 h 5 m
€1,020-1172
2 stops
PEK · 25 km
7 h 50 m
no fares
MAD · 14 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

MeasureBeijingMadrid
Official languagePutonghuaSpanish
CurrencyYuan Renminbi (CNY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsACI220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, ambulance 120, fire 119112
Elevation43 m663 m
Main airportBeijing Capital International Airport (PEK)25 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year6 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBeijingMadrid
City population21,893,0953,506,730
People per km²1,3345,801
Museums within 10 km8388
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km64
Distinct cuisines in the centre29106

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Beijing or Madrid 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. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.

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.