VacationSelector

Cardiff 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

Cardiff
✓ Best match
48
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.

Santiago de Compostela
42
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.

CardiffSantiago de Compostela
Beaches & swimming. Cardiff leads by 46 points.46
CardiffSantiago de Compostela
Score460
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km80
Coast distance2 km26 km
Water distance2 km26 km
Places to eat. Cardiff leads by 12 points.12
CardiffSantiago de Compostela
Score6048
Restaurants within 2 km of centre541336
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3223
Museums & heritage. Santiago de Compostela leads by 5 points.5
CardiffSantiago de Compostela
Score3944
Museums within 10 km6116
Museums within 2 km of centre614
Share of museums within 2 km %1088
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Cardiff leads by 12 points.12
CardiffSantiago de Compostela
Score4836
Drinking venues within 4 km536306
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre395268
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7488
Nightclubs within 4 km3513
Nature & day trips. Cardiff leads by 4 points.4
CardiffSantiago de Compostela
Score5046
Protected land share 50 km %1811
Landscape blanket share 50 km %150
Land share of disc %6892
Park area within 2 km88 hectares109 hectares
Good for families. Cardiff leads by 5 points.5
CardiffSantiago de Compostela
Score3227
Tourist attractions within 2 km42
Park area within 2 km88 hectares109 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Cardiff leads by 3 points.3
CardiffSantiago de Compostela
Score4542
Notable places within 2 km5144
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Santiago de Compostela leads by 17 points.17
CardiffSantiago de Compostela
Score5471
Price level global84.960.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Santiago de Compostela leads by 8 points.8
CardiffSantiago de Compostela
Score5462
Monthly daytime high7.7 °C to 20.2 °C11.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm41 mm to 223 mm
Dry months00
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
Cardiff
8
8
10
13
16
18
20
20
18
14
11
9
Santiago de Compostela
11
13
15
17
20
23
25
25
23
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Cardiff
8
7
8
9
12
15
17
18
17
15
12
9
Santiago de Compostela
14
13
13
14
15
16
17
17
17
16
15
14
Rainfall, mm
Cardiff
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Santiago de Compostela
217
149
153
136
116
61
41
61
91
208
223
222
Daylight, hours per day
Cardiff
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Santiago de Compostela
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cardiff
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
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. Cardiff: 1991-2020 normals, Cardiff-Wales Airport (14.9 km from centre). Santiago de Compostela: 1991-2020 normals, Santiago / Labacolla (8.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCardiffSantiago de Compostela
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 15 m
€86-122
SCQ · 10 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 40 m
€71-184
SCQ · 10 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
Las PalmasLPA
4 h 0 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 0 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 35 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 25 m
no fares
CWL · 15 km
1 h 40 m
€218-283
1 stop
SCQ · 10 km
SevillaSVQ
2 h 30 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
ArrecifeACE
3 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 34 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 34 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 2026-09 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

MeasureCardiffSantiago de Compostela
Official languageEnglishSpanish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation41 m260 m
Main airportCardiff International Airport (CWL)15 km from centre8 non-stop destinationsSantiago-Rosalía de Castro Airport (SCQ)10 km from centre27 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCardiffSantiago de Compostela
City population383,536100,965
People per km²2,734459
Museums within 10 km96
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre5538
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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