VacationSelector

Boston or Madrid?

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

Your match

Boston
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on museums & heritage and 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.

BostonMadrid
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 60 points.60
BostonMadrid
Score600
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km684
Coast distance1 km305 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 10 points.10
BostonMadrid
Score7383
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4523,508
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3228
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 32 points.32
BostonMadrid
Score4375
Museums within 10 km7997
Museums within 2 km of centre2759
Share of museums within 2 km %3461
Unesco sites within 50 km04
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 23 points.23
BostonMadrid
Score5881
Drinking venues within 4 km8862,414
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre5131,498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5862
Nightclubs within 4 km43341
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 10 points.10
BostonMadrid
Score5363
Protected land share 50 km %1219
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %77100
Park area within 2 km116 hectares187 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 24 points.24
BostonMadrid
Score5377
Tourist attractions within 2 km2861
Park area within 2 km116 hectares187 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 17 points.17
BostonMadrid
Score5875
Notable places within 2 km111288
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 28 points.28
BostonMadrid
Score4371
Price level global10060.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 16 points.16
BostonMadrid
Score5672
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C10 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm9 mm to 64 mm
Dry months07
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
Boston
3
4
8
14
19
25
28
27
23
17
11
6
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
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
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
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. Boston: 1991-2020 normals, Boston Logan International (3.5 km from centre). Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonMadrid
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
BarcelonaBCN
7 h 35 m
€481-586
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 14 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 20 m
€176-196
BOS · 4 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
8 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
BogotaBOG
5 h 35 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
10 h 5 m
€963-1395
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
DohaDOH
13 h 0 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
13 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
11 h 30 m
€638-793
2 stops
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 2026-09 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

MeasureBostonMadrid
Official languageSpanish
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation43 m663 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonMadrid
City population675,6473,506,730
People per km²2,9105,801
Museums within 10 km5188
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km04
Distinct cuisines in the centre74106
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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