VacationSelector

Galway 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

Galway
39
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Santiago de Compostela
✓ Best match
42
match

Wins on museums & heritage 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.

Scoreboard

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

GalwaySantiago de Compostela
Beaches & swimming. Galway leads by 51 points.51
GalwaySantiago de Compostela
Score510
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km130
Coast distance1 km26 km
Water distance1 km26 km
Places to eat. Santiago de Compostela leads by 11 points.11
GalwaySantiago de Compostela
Score3748
Restaurants within 2 km of centre173336
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2023
Museums & heritage. Santiago de Compostela leads by 24 points.24
GalwaySantiago de Compostela
Score2044
Museums within 10 km516
Museums within 2 km of centre514
Share of museums within 2 km %10088
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. Santiago de Compostela leads by 10 points.10
GalwaySantiago de Compostela
Score2636
Drinking venues within 4 km185306
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre153268
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8388
Nightclubs within 4 km813
Nature & day trips. Galway leads by 9 points.9
GalwaySantiago de Compostela
Score5546
Protected land share 50 km %11
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8592
Park area within 2 km65 hectares109 hectares
Good for families. Santiago de Compostela leads by 2 points.2
GalwaySantiago de Compostela
Score2527
Tourist attractions within 2 km52
Park area within 2 km65 hectares109 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Santiago de Compostela leads by 20 points.20
GalwaySantiago de Compostela
Score2242
Notable places within 2 km1444
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Santiago de Compostela leads by 14 points.14
GalwaySantiago de Compostela
Score5771
Price level global80.260.8
Daily budget€187€122
Year-round weather. Santiago de Compostela leads by 8 points.8
GalwaySantiago de Compostela
Score5462
Monthly daytime high8.9 °C to 19.6 °C11.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall63 mm to 113 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
Galway
9
10
11
14
16
19
20
19
18
14
11
9
Santiago de Compostela
11
13
15
17
20
23
25
25
23
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Galway
9
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
15
14
12
10
Santiago de Compostela
14
13
13
14
15
16
17
17
17
16
15
14
Rainfall, mm
Galway
100
87
76
63
63
72
76
89
77
101
104
113
Santiago de Compostela
217
149
153
136
116
61
41
61
91
208
223
222
Daylight, hours per day
Galway
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
Galway
2
2
4
5
6
5
4
5
4
3
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. Galway: 1991-2020 normals, Shannon Airport (64.2 km from centre). Santiago de Compostela: 1991-2020 normals, Santiago / Labacolla (8.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGalwaySantiago de Compostela
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
MadridMAD
2 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
1 h 15 m
€86-122
SCQ · 10 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
1 h 40 m
€218-283
1 stop
SCQ · 10 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
ArrecifeACE
3 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
Las PalmasLPA
4 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
Puerto del RosarioFUE
3 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 40 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

MeasureGalwaySantiago de Compostela
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 m260 m
Main airportShannon Airport (SNN)64 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsSantiago-Rosalía de Castro Airport (SCQ)10 km from centre27 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureGalwaySantiago de Compostela
City population83,456100,965
People per km²1,563459
Museums within 10 km46
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre2538
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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