VacationSelector

Madrid or Marrakech?

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

Your match

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Marrakech
50
match

Wins on value for money and year-round weather 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.

MadridMarrakech
Beaches & swimming. Madrid and Marrakech are level on 0.
MadridMarrakech
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km40
Coast distance305 km134 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 29 points.29
MadridMarrakech
Score8354
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,508461
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2826
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 31 points.31
MadridMarrakech
Score7544
Museums within 10 km9722
Museums within 2 km of centre5917
Share of museums within 2 km %6177
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 44 points.44
MadridMarrakech
Score8137
Drinking venues within 4 km2,414282
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498161
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6257
Nightclubs within 4 km34132
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 11 points.11
MadridMarrakech
Score6352
Protected land share 50 km %19
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km187 hectares47 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 24 points.24
MadridMarrakech
Score7753
Tourist attractions within 2 km6128
Park area within 2 km187 hectares47 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 29 points.29
MadridMarrakech
Score7546
Notable places within 2 km28855
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Marrakech leads by 15 points.15
MadridMarrakech
Score7186
Price level global60.839.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Marrakech leads by 9 points.9
MadridMarrakech
Score7281
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C19.1 °C to 37.6 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm1 mm to 36 mm
Dry months712
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
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Marrakech
19
21
24
26
30
34
38
37
33
29
23
20
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Marrakech
26
27
36
28
9
3
1
3
14
19
29
25
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Marrakech
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
Marrakech
8
8
8
9
10
11
11
10
9
8
8
7

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre). Marrakech: 1991-2020 normals, Marrakech (5.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridMarrakech
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
3 h 20 m
€140-172
RAK · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
3 h 10 m
€85-123
RAK · 6 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
RAK · 6 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
€53-86
MAD · 14 km
3 h 10 m
€61-121
RAK · 6 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 15 m
€99-166
MAD · 14 km
3 h 30 m
€122-160
1 stop
RAK · 6 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 15 m
€40-87
MAD · 14 km
1 h 35 m
€64-110
RAK · 6 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
2 h 50 m
€109-153
MAD · 14 km
1 h 45 m
€102-113
1 stop
RAK · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
3 h 10 m
€115-186
1 stop
RAK · 6 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
RAK · 6 km
DohaDOH
6 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
7 h 30 m
no fares
RAK · 6 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

MeasureMadridMarrakech
Official languageSpanishArabic, Standard Moroccan Tamazight
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Moroccan Dirham (MAD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1
Emergency number112Police 19/112, ambulance 15, fire 15
Elevation663 m465 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsMarrakesh Menara Airport (RAK)6 km from centre118 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridMarrakech
City population3,506,7301,002,697
People per km²5,8014,360
Museums within 10 km8814
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre10656

Where else could you go?

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