VacationSelector

Lisbon or Toledo?

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

Your match

Lisbon
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.

Toledo
40
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Lisbon if you want a wide choice of places to eat, bars and clubs worth staying out for, more museums, and beaches within reach in the warm months.

Choose Toledo if you want a small historic city you can cross on foot, dry weather through most of the year, and you don't mind that eating out and nightlife are both limited.

Scoreboard

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

LisbonToledo
Beaches & swimming. Lisbon leads by 57 points.57
LisbonToledo
Score570
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km241
Coast distance2 km320 km
Water distance2 km—
Places to eat. Lisbon leads by 56 points.56
LisbonToledo
Score8024
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,496249
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km317
Museums & heritage. Lisbon leads by 24 points.24
LisbonToledo
Score7046
Museums within 10 km12419
Museums within 2 km of centre5419
Share of museums within 2 km %44100
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Lisbon leads by 48 points.48
LisbonToledo
Score6517
Drinking venues within 4 km1,225120
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre956115
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7896
Nightclubs within 4 km655
Nature & day trips. Lisbon leads by 28 points.28
LisbonToledo
Score5628
Protected land share 50 km %114
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %54100
Park area within 2 km77 hectares59 hectares
Good for families. Lisbon leads by 15 points.15
LisbonToledo
Score6954
Tourist attractions within 2 km8232
Park area within 2 km77 hectares59 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Lisbon leads by 20 points.20
LisbonToledo
Score6646
Notable places within 2 km16955
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lisbon leads by 3 points.3
LisbonToledo
Score7471
Price level global55.960.8
Daily budget€109€122
Year-round weather. Lisbon leads by 4 points.4
LisbonToledo
Score7874
Monthly daytime high14.9 °C to 28.4 °C11.9 °C to 35.1 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 121 mm6 mm to 49 mm
Dry months411
0255075100

Where they differ

Lisbon has many times as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens, and many times as many bars and clubs. It also has 24 beaches nearby against Toledo's 1, although the sea only reaches 19°C at its warmest.

Toledo is the drier of the two, with 11 months at 40mm of rain or less against Lisbon's 4, and it runs hotter in high summer, with highs near 35°C. Its museums, fewer in number, sit tightly around the centre.

Where they are alike

The two sit closest on cost. The estimated daily budget is €109 for Portugal and €122 for Spain, national figures rather than city measurements, so price is unlikely to decide this one.

Their weather profiles are also close: both get long hours of sunshine, and both cool to winter highs of 12-15°C rather than anything harsher. For families, each has one theme park within reach, and park space near the centre in both, though Lisbon has more.

Which traveller are you?

Someone travelling to eat and drink well should choose Lisbon: many times as many restaurants near the centre, a far wider spread of kitchens, and many times as many bars and clubs.

Families are better served in Lisbon too, with many more attractions near the centre, more park space, and 24 beaches nearby, though the sea tops out at 19°C. Each city has one theme park within reach.

A traveller after old streets and a short walking itinerary can take Toledo, where museums and notable places cluster tightly in a small centre. Lisbon has far more of both, and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 2.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget is a national estimate, €109 for Portugal and €122 for Spain, covering restaurant and hotel price levels across each country rather than either city. A capital and a heavily visited historic town can both sit well away from their national average, by more than the gap between these two figures, so neither number tells you what your week will cost.

Beach count is not swimming weather: Lisbon's sea never reaches 21°C, and its driest, warmest months are also the ones most people travel in. Toledo's dry summer arrives with 35°C, its least comfortable stretch on foot.

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
Lisbon
15
16
19
20
23
26
28
28
26
23
18
15
Toledo
12
14
18
21
25
31
35
35
29
23
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Lisbon
15
15
15
15
16
18
18
19
19
18
17
16
Toledo
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Lisbon
104
73
72
67
53
13
3
7
36
108
121
102
Toledo
26
25
33
40
39
19
6
9
21
49
38
35
Daylight, hours per day
Lisbon
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Toledo
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Lisbon
5
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
5
5
Toledo
5
6
7
8
10
11
13
12
9
7
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lisbon: 1991-2020 normals, Lisboa / Geof (1.1 km from centre). Toledo: 1991-2020 normals, Toledo (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Lisbon works best from June to September, when highs sit at 26-28°C and rain nearly stops, around 3mm in July. The sea is at its warmest, 19°C, at the end of that run. Autumn is a different city, with over 100mm of rain a month.

Toledo suits late spring and early autumn: 25°C in May, 29°C in September, and dry, as almost every month there is. July and August push to 35°C, hot for a city you see on foot.

Getting there

Flying fromLisbonToledo
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€118-145
LIS · 7 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 80 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 30 m
€112-185
LIS · 7 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 80 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 50 m
€74-97
LIS · 7 km
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 80 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 35 m
€124-144
LIS · 7 km
2 h 0 m
€53-86
MAD · 80 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 50 m
€120-145
LIS · 7 km
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 80 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 50 m
€167-189
LIS · 7 km
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 80 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
10 h 0 m
€744-1049
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
10 h 30 m
€636-955
1 stop
MAD · 80 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 0 m
€621-718
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 80 km
DohaDOH
7 h 30 m
no fares
LIS · 7 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 80 km
SeoulICN, GMP
12 h 55 m
no fares
LIS · 7 km
12 h 25 m
no fares
MAD · 80 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

MeasureLisbonToledo
Official languagePortugueseSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation100 m523 m
Main airportLisbon Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS)7 km from centre153 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)80 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLisbonToledo
City population545,79687,216
People per km²5,453376
Museums within 10 km7813
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre10613
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone–

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lisbon or Toledo 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.