VacationSelector

Granada or Madrid?

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

Your match

Granada
53
match

Wins on year-round weather with your weighting.

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

The verdict

Choose Granada if you want the warmer end of the year, more protected land around the city and a compact place where the walking is short and the choice of kitchens broad.

Choose Madrid if you want museums, late nights and eating out at scale, with 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach and 3 theme parks for children.

Scoreboard

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

GranadaMadrid
Beaches & swimming. Granada and Madrid are level on 0.
GranadaMadrid
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km04
Coast distance48 km305 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 16 points.16
GranadaMadrid
Score6783
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8723,508
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3428
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 27 points.27
GranadaMadrid
Score4875
Museums within 10 km2897
Museums within 2 km of centre2659
Share of museums within 2 km %9361
Unesco sites within 50 km14
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 29 points.29
GranadaMadrid
Score5281
Drinking venues within 4 km6372,414
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre4941,498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7862
Nightclubs within 4 km46341
Nature & day trips. Granada and Madrid are level on 63.
GranadaMadrid
Score6363
Protected land share 50 km %2719
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %96100
Park area within 2 km46 hectares187 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 21 points.21
GranadaMadrid
Score5677
Tourist attractions within 2 km6061
Park area within 2 km46 hectares187 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 31 points.31
GranadaMadrid
Score4475
Notable places within 2 km50288
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Granada and Madrid are level on 71.
GranadaMadrid
Score7171
Price level global60.860.8
Daily budget€122€122
Year-round weather. Granada leads by 2 points.2
GranadaMadrid
Score7472
Monthly daytime high13.1 °C to 34.8 °C10 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 51 mm9 mm to 64 mm
Dry months77
0255075100

Where they differ

Granada runs warmer across the year, with daytime highs of 13-35°C against Madrid's 10-33°C, and greener surroundings: 27% of the land around it is protected against 19% around Madrid. Its restaurants cover a wider range of kitchens.

Madrid has many times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre and about three times as many museums, with 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Granada's 1. It also has about three times as many places to drink, far more nightclubs and many more restaurants near the centre.

Where they are alike

Day trips come out level. Granada has more protected countryside around it, while Madrid has many times as much park space near the centre, so either way there is open ground within reach of a day.

Weather and swimming sit close too. Both have 7 months at 40mm of rain or less, dry summers and their wettest spells in late autumn, and neither has a month with sea at 21°C or more, so neither is a swimming trip.

Which traveller are you?

A culture-first traveller should take Madrid. It has about three times as many museums, far more notable places within walking distance of the centre, and 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Granada's 1.

Families are better served in Madrid too: 3 theme parks within reach where Granada has none, and much more park space near the centre, though the two hold roughly equal numbers of central attractions.

Walkers and eaters who want quiet should choose Granada. More of the surrounding land is protected, the year runs warmer at 13-35°C, and the kitchens on offer cover a wider range.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figure is a national price level, identical for both cities by construction, so it tells you nothing about which is dearer; the €122 daily budget beside it is one national estimate, not a measurement of Granada or Madrid. Treat cost as an open question.

Warm months are not automatically good ones. Granada's July at 35°C is nearly rainless, but that heat rules out long days on foot, and its strongest month falls in spring rather than summer. Madrid's October is mild yet the wettest month of its year. Neither city offers swimming, whatever the 4 beaches near Madrid suggest.

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
Granada
13
15
18
20
25
31
35
34
29
24
17
14
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Rainfall, mm
Granada
39
33
45
44
29
6
0
3
28
45
51
44
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Daylight, hours per day
Granada
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Granada
6
6
7
8
10
12
13
11
8
7
5
5
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. Granada: 1991-2020 normals, Granada / Caserío Hospicio (5 km from centre). Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Granada is at its best in May, 25°C with 29mm of rain, and again in September, 29°C with 28mm. July at 35°C is dry but hard work, and November brings 51mm, the wettest month of its year.

Madrid peaks in June, 29°C with 20mm, and September is close behind at 27°C. October is its weak spot, 64mm of rain against Granada's 45mm, and January is colder here at 10°C, so a late-autumn trip favours Granada.

Getting there

Flying fromGranadaMadrid
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 97 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 55 m
€146-177
AGP · 97 km
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 14 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 45 m
€110-142
1 stop
AGP · 97 km
2 h 15 m
€99-166
MAD · 14 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 30 m
€92-138
GRX · 16 km
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 30 m
€59-73
AGP · 97 km
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
DublinDUB
2 h 50 m
€122-139
1 stop
AGP · 97 km
2 h 25 m
€111-148
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€61-88
AGP · 97 km
2 h 0 m
€53-86
MAD · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 20 m
no fares
GRX · 16 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
AGP · 97 km
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
DohaDOH
7 h 5 m
no fares
AGP · 97 km
6 h 55 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

MeasureGranadaMadrid
Official languageSpanishSpanish
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
Elevation693 m663 m
Main airportF.G.L. Airport Granada-Jaén Airport (GRX)16 km from centre12 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureGranadaMadrid
City population233,9753,506,730
People per km²2,6595,801
Museums within 10 km1988
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km14
Distinct cuisines in the centre62106

Where else could you go?

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