VacationSelector

Brussels or Madrid?

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

Your match

Brussels
56
match

Wins on museums & heritage with your weighting.

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

Scoreboard

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

BrusselsMadrid
Beaches & swimming. Brussels and Madrid are level on 0.
BrusselsMadrid
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km04
Coast distance56 km305 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 2 points.2
BrusselsMadrid
Score8183
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,7793,508
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4428
Museums & heritage. Brussels leads by 5 points.5
BrusselsMadrid
Score8075
Museums within 10 km12097
Museums within 2 km of centre5959
Share of museums within 2 km %4961
Unesco sites within 50 km104
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 13 points.13
BrusselsMadrid
Score6881
Drinking venues within 4 km1,4142,414
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre8621,498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6162
Nightclubs within 4 km84341
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 32 points.32
BrusselsMadrid
Score3163
Protected land share 50 km %619
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km65 hectares187 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 21 points.21
BrusselsMadrid
Score5677
Tourist attractions within 2 km2861
Park area within 2 km65 hectares187 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km23
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 2 points.2
BrusselsMadrid
Score7375
Notable places within 2 km254288
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 11 points.11
BrusselsMadrid
Score6071
Price level global76.260.8
Daily budget€180€122
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 15 points.15
BrusselsMadrid
Score5772
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.3 °C10 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 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
Brussels
6
7
11
15
18
21
23
23
20
15
10
6
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Rainfall, mm
Brussels
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Daylight, hours per day
Brussels
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Brussels
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1
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. Brussels: 1991-2020 normals, Uccle (5.2 km from centre). Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrusselsMadrid
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 11 km
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 11 km
1 h 15 m
€40-87
MAD · 14 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 20 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
2 h 50 m
€109-153
MAD · 14 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 25 m
€36-101
BRU · 11 km
2 h 0 m
€53-86
MAD · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
7 h 20 m
€356-444
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
10 h 30 m
€636-955
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 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 2026-08 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

MeasureBrusselsMadrid
Official languageFrench, German, DutchSpanish
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
Elevation70 m663 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)11 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrusselsMadrid
City population195,5463,506,730
People per km²5,9085,801
Museums within 10 km10588
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km104
Distinct cuisines in the centre109106

Where else could you go?

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