VacationSelector

Dresden or Madrid?

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

Your match

Dresden
48
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife and nature & day trips 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.

DresdenMadrid
Beaches & swimming. Dresden and Madrid are level on 0.
DresdenMadrid
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km224
Coast distance267 km305 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 22 points.22
DresdenMadrid
Score6183
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4223,508
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4228
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 21 points.21
DresdenMadrid
Score5475
Museums within 10 km6697
Museums within 2 km of centre3459
Share of museums within 2 km %5261
Unesco sites within 50 km14
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 39 points.39
DresdenMadrid
Score4281
Drinking venues within 4 km3592,414
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2651,498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7462
Nightclubs within 4 km43341
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 24 points.24
DresdenMadrid
Score3963
Protected land share 50 km %1419
Landscape blanket share 50 km %90
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km80 hectares187 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 18 points.18
DresdenMadrid
Score5977
Tourist attractions within 2 km3261
Park area within 2 km80 hectares187 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km23
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 22 points.22
DresdenMadrid
Score5375
Notable places within 2 km82288
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 11 points.11
DresdenMadrid
Score6071
Price level global75.960.8
Daily budget€163€122
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 10 points.10
DresdenMadrid
Score6272
Monthly daytime high4 °C to 26.2 °C10 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall31 mm to 83 mm9 mm to 64 mm
Dry months47
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
Dresden
4
6
10
17
21
24
26
26
21
15
9
6
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Rainfall, mm
Dresden
46
31
36
36
64
72
80
83
55
49
40
45
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Daylight, hours per day
Dresden
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Dresden
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
7
6
4
2
2
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. Dresden: 1991-2020 normals, Dresden-Strehlen (3.8 km from centre). Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDresdenMadrid
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€86-113
PRG · 112 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 45 m
€62-97
PRG · 112 km
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 25 m
€57-79
PRG · 112 km
2 h 0 m
€53-86
MAD · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
€163-247
PRG · 112 km
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 14 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 15 m
€111-155
PRG · 112 km
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€118-136
PRG · 112 km
3 h 50 m
€182-348
MAD · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€737
BER · 147 km
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 20 m
€718-820
2 stops
BER · 147 km
11 h 30 m
€638-793
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
DohaDOH
5 h 40 m
no fares
PRG · 112 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
Punta CanaPUJ
10 h 0 m
no fares
PRG · 112 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
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

MeasureDresdenMadrid
Official languageGermanSpanish
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
Elevation126 m663 m
Main airportDresden Airport (DRS)10 km from centre12 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureDresdenMadrid
City population564,9043,506,730
People per km²1,7205,801
Museums within 10 km7088
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km14
Distinct cuisines in the centre77106

Where else could you go?

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