VacationSelector

Geneva or Madrid?

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

Your match

Geneva
50
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on value for money 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.

GenevaMadrid
Beaches & swimming. Geneva and Madrid are level on 0.
GenevaMadrid
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km434
Coast distance279 km305 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 13 points.13
GenevaMadrid
Score7083
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0283,508
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3528
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 23 points.23
GenevaMadrid
Score5275
Museums within 10 km3597
Museums within 2 km of centre2059
Share of museums within 2 km %5761
Unesco sites within 50 km24
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 31 points.31
GenevaMadrid
Score5081
Drinking venues within 4 km5492,414
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre4271,498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7862
Nightclubs within 4 km60341
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 4 points.4
GenevaMadrid
Score5963
Protected land share 50 km %2719
Landscape blanket share 50 km %210
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km182 hectares187 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 12 points.12
GenevaMadrid
Score6577
Tourist attractions within 2 km2861
Park area within 2 km182 hectares187 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km23
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 19 points.19
GenevaMadrid
Score5675
Notable places within 2 km99288
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 36 points.36
GenevaMadrid
Score3571
Price level global110.560.8
Daily budget€248€122
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 13 points.13
GenevaMadrid
Score5972
Monthly daytime high5.1 °C to 26.8 °C10 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 94 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
Geneva
5
7
12
16
20
24
27
26
21
16
9
6
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Rainfall, mm
Geneva
71
55
61
66
77
81
77
80
87
94
87
88
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Daylight, hours per day
Geneva
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Geneva
2
3
6
6
7
8
9
8
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. Geneva: 1991-2020 normals, Geneve-Cointrin (5.7 km from centre). Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGenevaMadrid
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€91-200
GVA · 5 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€104-203
GVA · 5 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 25 m
€156-181
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
1 h 15 m
€40-87
MAD · 14 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 25 m
€65-78
GVA · 5 km
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
PortoOPO
2 h 10 m
€127-171
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
1 h 10 m
€39-51
MAD · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
€160-186
GVA · 5 km
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 30 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€318-351
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
7 h 20 m
€356-444
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
11 h 30 m
€638-793
2 stops
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

MeasureGenevaMadrid
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshSpanish
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation403 m663 m
Main airportGeneva International Airport (GVA)5 km from centre140 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureGenevaMadrid
City population209,0613,506,730
People per km²13,1485,801
Museums within 10 km3588
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km24
Distinct cuisines in the centre80106

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Geneva 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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). 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. 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.