VacationSelector

Cadiz or Santiago de Compostela?

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

Your match

Cadiz
✓ Best match
49
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Santiago de Compostela
42
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.

The verdict

Choose Cadiz if swimming is the point of the trip. The sea starts at the edge of the centre, it is warm enough to swim in for three months, and the summer is reliably dry and warm.

Choose Santiago de Compostela if you would rather walk a dense centre of notable buildings, go out late, and reach protected countryside on day trips, and can accept cooler, much wetter weather.

Scoreboard

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

CadizSantiago de Compostela
Beaches & swimming. Cadiz leads by 70 points.70
CadizSantiago de Compostela
Score700
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km290
Coast distance0 km26 km
Water distance0 km26 km
Places to eat. Santiago de Compostela leads by 4 points.4
CadizSantiago de Compostela
Score4448
Restaurants within 2 km of centre338336
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1823
Museums & heritage. Santiago de Compostela leads by 8 points.8
CadizSantiago de Compostela
Score3644
Museums within 10 km2316
Museums within 2 km of centre1614
Share of museums within 2 km %7088
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. Santiago de Compostela leads by 6 points.6
CadizSantiago de Compostela
Score3036
Drinking venues within 4 km241306
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre175268
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7388
Nightclubs within 4 km613
Nature & day trips. Santiago de Compostela leads by 20 points.20
CadizSantiago de Compostela
Score2646
Protected land share 50 km %411
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4592
Park area within 2 km24 hectares109 hectares
Good for families. Cadiz leads by 27 points.27
CadizSantiago de Compostela
Score5427
Tourist attractions within 2 km802
Park area within 2 km24 hectares109 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Santiago de Compostela leads by 11 points.11
CadizSantiago de Compostela
Score3142
Notable places within 2 km2344
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cadiz and Santiago de Compostela are level on 71.
CadizSantiago de Compostela
Score7171
Price level global60.860.8
Daily budget€122€122
Year-round weather. Cadiz leads by 21 points.21
CadizSantiago de Compostela
Score8362
Monthly daytime high16.2 °C to 28 °C11.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 89 mm41 mm to 223 mm
Dry months50
0255075100

Where they differ

Cadiz sits on the water, with 29 beaches nearby, where Santiago's coast is 26km off and has none. It is warmer and drier too, highs of 16-28°C against 11-25°C, with five months at 40mm or less, and far more attractions near the centre for families.

Santiago fits about twice as many notable places into walking distance of its centre, has far more park space near it, and sits in greener country, with 11% of surrounding land protected against 4% around Cadiz.

Where they are alike

Eating out is the axis where they are closest. Both have a comparable number of restaurants near the centre, so neither will feel short of options; Santiago's kitchens cover a somewhat wider range.

The evenings and the museums are close too. Each keeps its bars and clubs near the centre, Santiago with somewhat more of both, and both hold a modest number of museums, Cadiz slightly ahead, while Santiago adds 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach.

Which traveller are you?

Families with young children: Cadiz. Beaches sit at the edge of the centre, the sea reaches 23°C in August, and there are far more attractions close in. Santiago offers park space instead, and neither has a theme park.

Walkers and heritage travellers: Santiago. Roughly twice as many notable places sit within walking distance of the centre, and 2 UNESCO-listed sites lie within day-trip reach, with 11% of the surrounding land protected for walks out of town.

Eaters and late-night travellers: close, but Santiago edges it, with a wider spread of kitchens, more bars and about twice as many clubs, all near the centre. Cadiz matches it for sheer number of restaurants.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value comparison here tells you nothing: both cities carry the same national price level, so it cannot separate them, and the €122 a day beside it is a national estimate rather than a measurement of either place. Treat costs as an open question.

Cadiz's beach strength is seasonal: the sea only passes 21°C in three months, all of them peak holiday months, and the same summer weeks that bring almost no rain bring the crowds. Santiago's greener surroundings and park space come with the rainfall that produces them, so its walking country is often wet outside high summer.

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
Cadiz
16
17
19
20
23
26
28
28
26
23
20
17
Santiago de Compostela
11
13
15
17
20
23
25
25
23
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Cadiz
16
15
16
17
18
21
23
23
22
20
18
17
Santiago de Compostela
14
13
13
14
15
16
17
17
17
16
15
14
Rainfall, mm
Cadiz
62
52
54
43
32
6
0
2
29
76
89
73
Santiago de Compostela
217
149
153
136
116
61
41
61
91
208
223
222
Daylight, hours per day
Cadiz
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Santiago de Compostela
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cadiz
6
7
8
9
11
12
12
11
9
8
6
5
Santiago de Compostela
3
4
5
6
7
7
8
8
6
4
3
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cadiz: 1991-2020 normals, Cadiz Bay / Puntales (5.2 km from centre). Santiago de Compostela: 1991-2020 normals, Santiago / Labacolla (8.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Cadiz has the longer season, and its dry months are also its warm ones. June to September holds 26-28°C with the sea at 21-23°C, and high summer is all but rainless at 0-2mm. Autumn is the wet end, rising to 89mm.

Santiago is a summer trip: July and August reach 25°C and are its driest at 41-61mm. From October to December it takes 208-223mm a month, with highs of 11-14°C, so the shoulder months are wet rather than merely cool.

Getting there

Flying fromCadizSantiago de Compostela
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
no fares
XRY · 31 km
1 h 40 m
€71-184
SCQ · 10 km
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
no fares
XRY · 31 km
1 h 15 m
€86-122
SCQ · 10 km
ValenciaVLC
1 h 15 m
€50-96
SVQ · 105 km
1 h 35 m
€114-174
1 stop
SCQ · 10 km
BilbaoBIO
1 h 30 m
€112-119
SVQ · 105 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
AlicanteALC
1 h 15 m
€85-133
SVQ · 105 km
1 h 40 m
€218-283
1 stop
SCQ · 10 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 40 m
no fares
XRY · 31 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
MalagaAGP
50 m
€69-82
TNG · 95 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
2 h 15 m
no fares
XRY · 31 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
SevillaSVQ
55 m
no fares
TNG · 95 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 30 m
no fares
SVQ · 105 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 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

MeasureCadizSantiago de Compostela
Official languageSpanishSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation11 m260 m
Main airportJerez Airport (XRY)31 km from centre23 non-stop destinationsSantiago-Rosalía de Castro Airport (SCQ)10 km from centre27 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCadizSantiago de Compostela
City population109,950100,965
People per km²9,087459
Museums within 10 km116
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre2838
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cadiz or Santiago de Compostela 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.