VacationSelector

Biarritz or Madrid?

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

Your match

Biarritz
38
match

Wins on beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife and good for families with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Biarritz if the trip is built around the sea: 43 beaches within reach, and water at 21°C or more in late summer, with a small town behind the sand.

Choose Madrid if you want museums, dinner and a late drink within walking distance of one another, along with parks and day trips, and you can do without a swimming coast entirely.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

BiarritzMadrid
Beaches & swimming. Biarritz leads by 67 points.67
BiarritzMadrid
Score670
Swim season months20
Beaches 10 km434
Coast distance1 km305 km
Water distance1 km—
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 51 points.51
BiarritzMadrid
Score3283
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2073,508
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1328
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 44 points.44
BiarritzMadrid
Score3175
Museums within 10 km1697
Museums within 2 km of centre559
Share of museums within 2 km %3161
Unesco sites within 50 km24
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 66 points.66
BiarritzMadrid
Score1581
Drinking venues within 4 km1052,414
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre821,498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7862
Nightclubs within 4 km6341
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 33 points.33
BiarritzMadrid
Score3063
Protected land share 50 km %619
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %64100
Park area within 2 km32 hectares187 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 56 points.56
BiarritzMadrid
Score2177
Tourist attractions within 2 km261
Park area within 2 km32 hectares187 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 52 points.52
BiarritzMadrid
Score2375
Notable places within 2 km15288
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 9 points.9
BiarritzMadrid
Score6271
Price level global73.760.8
Daily budget€160€122
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 7 points.7
BiarritzMadrid
Score6572
Monthly daytime high13.1 °C to 25.8 °C10 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall97 mm to 224 mm9 mm to 64 mm
Dry months07
0255075100

Where they differ

Biarritz is the one with a coast: 43 beaches nearby against Madrid's 4, and two months when the sea reaches 21°C or more, which Madrid has none of.

Madrid has many times as many bars and clubs, most of them close to the centre, so an evening can run long without a taxi. It is also the stronger city for families, with many more attractions and far more park space near the centre, and 3 theme parks within reach against Biarritz's 1.

Where they are alike

Neither has a hard winter. January highs sit near 13°C in Biarritz and 10°C in Madrid, and both warm steadily into a hot late summer, so neither has a season that is simply written off.

Both also sit in countries whose national budget estimates fall in a broadly similar range, so the planning arithmetic is comparable in kind. Both have protected countryside and UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, Madrid with the larger share of protected land.

Which traveller are you?

If your holiday is measured in swims, Biarritz: 43 beaches within reach and water at 21-22°C in late summer, with a compact town behind them rather than a long list of sights.

If you want a museum, dinner and a late bar in one evening, Madrid. Its museums, restaurants and drinking places cluster tightly around the centre, and the range of kitchens is far wider.

Travelling with children, Madrid again: many more attractions near the centre, far more park space to break up the day, and 3 theme parks within reach against Biarritz's 1.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €160 for France and €122 for Spain, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of Biarritz or Madrid. A small resort town and a capital can each sit a long way from their own country's average, so the gap between the two says nothing reliable about what either trip will actually cost.

Biarritz's beach count covers a coast warm enough for swimming in only two months of the year, and those are the months when a town of 26,200 people is busiest. Madrid's steady year-round weather likewise hides a midsummer peak that most visitors plan around rather than enjoy.

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
Biarritz
13
14
16
18
21
23
25
26
24
21
16
14
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Sea temperature, °C
Biarritz
13
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Biarritz
166
143
127
147
133
106
97
110
146
166
224
179
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Daylight, hours per day
Biarritz
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Biarritz
3
3
5
5
6
6
7
7
6
4
3
2
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. Biarritz: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Fuenterrabia (24.4 km from centre). Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Biarritz is at its best from July to September, when highs run 24-26°C and the sea reaches 21-22°C. Rain never really stops here: the driest month still brings 97mm and the wettest 224mm, so showers are possible whenever you go.

Madrid suits May, June and September, when highs sit at 23-29°C and rain is light. July and August stay dry but reach 32-33°C, which is heavy going for a day spent walking between museums.

Getting there

Flying fromBiarritzMadrid
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 3 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
1 h 20 m
€56-238
MAD · 14 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
3 h 10 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
2 h 50 m
€109-153
MAD · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 111 km
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 3 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 111 km
2 h 25 m
€193-236
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
2 h 20 m
€121-231
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 23 km
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
1 h 55 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

MeasureBiarritzMadrid
Official languageFrenchSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m663 m
Main airportBiarritz Pays Basque airport (BIQ)3 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBiarritzMadrid
City population26,2063,506,730
People per km²2,2405,801
Museums within 10 km888
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km24
Distinct cuisines in the centre24106
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months–

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Biarritz 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. 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.