VacationSelector

Boston or Malaga?

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 sights concentration and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Malaga
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on value for money 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.

BostonMalaga
Beaches & swimming. Malaga leads by 6 points.6
BostonMalaga
Score6066
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km6821
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Boston leads by 4 points.4
BostonMalaga
Score7369
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4521,002
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3234
Museums & heritage. Malaga leads by 10 points.10
BostonMalaga
Score4353
Museums within 10 km7940
Museums within 2 km of centre2735
Share of museums within 2 km %3488
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Boston leads by 4 points.4
BostonMalaga
Score5854
Drinking venues within 4 km886715
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre513486
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5868
Nightclubs within 4 km4345
Nature & day trips. Boston leads by 10 points.10
BostonMalaga
Score5343
Protected land share 50 km %127
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7763
Park area within 2 km116 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Boston and Malaga are level on 53.
BostonMalaga
Score5353
Tourist attractions within 2 km2833
Park area within 2 km116 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Boston leads by 21 points.21
BostonMalaga
Score5837
Notable places within 2 km11133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Malaga leads by 28 points.28
BostonMalaga
Score4371
Price level global10060.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Malaga leads by 26 points.26
BostonMalaga
Score5682
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C17.2 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm0 mm to 88 mm
Dry months05
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
Malaga
17
18
20
22
25
29
31
32
28
24
20
18
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Malaga
15
15
15
16
18
20
22
23
22
20
17
16
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Malaga
62
55
66
41
23
4
0
3
25
60
78
88
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Malaga
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
Malaga
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
5

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). Malaga: 1991-2020 normals, Malaga / Aeropuerto (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonMalaga
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
7 h 35 m
€481-586
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 35 m
€73-109
AGP · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 55 m
€146-177
AGP · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 25 m
€92
AGP · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
DublinDUB
6 h 20 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 50 m
€122-139
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
MadridMAD
7 h 5 m
€570
BOS · 4 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
CopenhagenCPH
7 h 35 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
3 h 35 m
€107-122
AGP · 9 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
7 h 50 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 25 m
€61-88
AGP · 9 km
Abu DhabiAUH
13 h 15 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
7 h 25 m
no fares
AGP · 9 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

MeasureBostonMalaga
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 m18 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsMálaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP)9 km from centre165 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonMalaga
City population675,647599,063
People per km²2,9101,517
Museums within 10 km5132
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre7465
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone3 months

Where else could you go?

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