VacationSelector

Edinburgh 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

Edinburgh
✓ Best match
58
match

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

Santiago de Compostela
42
match

Wins on value for money 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.

EdinburghSantiago de Compostela
Beaches & swimming. Edinburgh leads by 55 points.55
EdinburghSantiago de Compostela
Score550
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km200
Coast distance3 km26 km
Water distance3 km26 km
Places to eat. Edinburgh leads by 22 points.22
EdinburghSantiago de Compostela
Score7048
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,023336
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3523
Museums & heritage. Edinburgh leads by 13 points.13
EdinburghSantiago de Compostela
Score5744
Museums within 10 km3016
Museums within 2 km of centre2214
Share of museums within 2 km %7388
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Edinburgh leads by 28 points.28
EdinburghSantiago de Compostela
Score6436
Drinking venues within 4 km1,193306
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre884268
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7488
Nightclubs within 4 km6513
Nature & day trips. Santiago de Compostela leads by 11 points.11
EdinburghSantiago de Compostela
Score3546
Protected land share 50 km %211
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %8592
Park area within 2 km166 hectares109 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 45 points.45
EdinburghSantiago de Compostela
Score7227
Tourist attractions within 2 km872
Park area within 2 km166 hectares109 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Edinburgh leads by 18 points.18
EdinburghSantiago de Compostela
Score6042
Notable places within 2 km12644
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Santiago de Compostela leads by 17 points.17
EdinburghSantiago de Compostela
Score5471
Price level global84.960.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Santiago de Compostela leads by 11 points.11
EdinburghSantiago de Compostela
Score5162
Monthly daytime high6.6 °C to 18.8 °C11.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 80 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
Edinburgh
7
7
9
12
14
17
19
19
17
13
9
7
Santiago de Compostela
11
13
15
17
20
23
25
25
23
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Santiago de Compostela
14
13
13
14
15
16
17
17
17
16
15
14
Rainfall, mm
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Santiago de Compostela
217
149
153
136
116
61
41
61
91
208
223
222
Daylight, hours per day
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Santiago de Compostela
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Edinburgh
2
3
4
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
3
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. Edinburgh: 1991-2020 normals, Edinburgh Airport (10 km from centre). Santiago de Compostela: 1991-2020 normals, Santiago / Labacolla (8.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromEdinburghSantiago de Compostela
MadridMAD
2 h 40 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 15 m
€86-122
SCQ · 10 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 40 m
€58-103
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
1 h 40 m
€71-184
SCQ · 10 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
€41-45
EDI · 11 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 30 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
MalagaAGP
3 h 10 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
AlicanteALC
3 h 0 m
€106
EDI · 11 km
1 h 40 m
€218-283
1 stop
SCQ · 10 km
SevillaSVQ
3 h 5 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
Las PalmasLPA
4 h 30 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 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

MeasureEdinburghSantiago 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
Elevation47 m260 m
Main airportEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinationsSantiago-Rosalía de Castro Airport (SCQ)10 km from centre27 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureEdinburghSantiago de Compostela
City population488,050100,965
People per km²1,884459
Museums within 10 km326
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre7838
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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