VacationSelector

Galway or Madrid?

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

Your match

Galway
39
match

Wins on beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nightlife 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.

GalwayMadrid
Beaches & swimming. Galway leads by 51 points.51
GalwayMadrid
Score510
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km134
Coast distance1 km305 km
Water distance1 km—
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 46 points.46
GalwayMadrid
Score3783
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1733,508
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2028
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 55 points.55
GalwayMadrid
Score2075
Museums within 10 km597
Museums within 2 km of centre559
Share of museums within 2 km %10061
Unesco sites within 50 km04
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 55 points.55
GalwayMadrid
Score2681
Drinking venues within 4 km1852,414
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1531,498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8362
Nightclubs within 4 km8341
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 8 points.8
GalwayMadrid
Score5563
Protected land share 50 km %—19
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %85100
Park area within 2 km65 hectares187 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 52 points.52
GalwayMadrid
Score2577
Tourist attractions within 2 km561
Park area within 2 km65 hectares187 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 53 points.53
GalwayMadrid
Score2275
Notable places within 2 km14288
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 14 points.14
GalwayMadrid
Score5771
Price level global80.260.8
Daily budget€187€122
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 18 points.18
GalwayMadrid
Score5472
Monthly daytime high8.9 °C to 19.6 °C10 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall63 mm to 113 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
Galway
9
10
11
14
16
19
20
19
18
14
11
9
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Sea temperature, °C
Galway
9
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
15
14
12
10
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Galway
100
87
76
63
63
72
76
89
77
101
104
113
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Daylight, hours per day
Galway
8
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
Galway
2
2
4
5
6
5
4
5
4
3
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. Galway: 1991-2020 normals, Shannon Airport (64.2 km from centre). Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGalwayMadrid
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 50 m
€109-153
MAD · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
1 h 20 m
€56-238
MAD · 14 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
2 h 25 m
€111-148
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
ArrecifeACE
3 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
1 h 10 m
€78-91
MAD · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
3 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 30 m
no fares
NOC · 73 km
2 h 0 m
€53-86
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

MeasureGalwayMadrid
Official languageEnglish, IrishSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation25 m663 m
Main airportShannon Airport (SNN)64 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureGalwayMadrid
City population83,4563,506,730
People per km²1,5635,801
Museums within 10 km488
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km04
Distinct cuisines in the centre25106
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone–

Where else could you go?

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