VacationSelector

Madrid or Marseille?

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 good for families with your weighting.

Marseille
57
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

MadridMarseille
Beaches & swimming. Marseille leads by 67 points.67
MadridMarseille
Score067
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km464
Coast distance305 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 8 points.8
MadridMarseille
Score8375
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,5081,320
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2839
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 25 points.25
MadridMarseille
Score7550
Museums within 10 km9733
Museums within 2 km of centre5923
Share of museums within 2 km %6170
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 33 points.33
MadridMarseille
Score8148
Drinking venues within 4 km2,414544
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498454
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6283
Nightclubs within 4 km34130
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 26 points.26
MadridMarseille
Score6337
Protected land share 50 km %1915
Landscape blanket share 50 km %013
Land share of disc %10056
Park area within 2 km187 hectares25 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 33 points.33
MadridMarseille
Score7744
Tourist attractions within 2 km6117
Park area within 2 km187 hectares25 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km34
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 17 points.17
MadridMarseille
Score7558
Notable places within 2 km288111
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 9 points.9
MadridMarseille
Score7162
Price level global60.873.7
Daily budget€122€160
Year-round weather. Marseille leads by 3 points.3
MadridMarseille
Score7275
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C11.8 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm11 mm to 82 mm
Dry months76
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
Marseille
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
30
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Marseille
13
13
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
19
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Marseille
47
30
29
51
38
28
11
26
82
72
76
41
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Marseille
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
Marseille
5
6
8
8
10
11
12
11
9
6
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre). Marseille: 1991-2020 normals, Marseille / Marignane (20.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridMarseille
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
1 h 25 m
€110-119
MRS · 21 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
1 h 50 m
€65-134
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 15 m
€40-87
MAD · 14 km
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 15 m
€99-166
MAD · 14 km
1 h 40 m
€86-123
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 20 m
€56-238
MAD · 14 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 14 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 10 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
SeoulICN, GMP
12 h 25 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 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

MeasureMadridMarseille
Official languageSpanishFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation663 m0 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsMarseille Provence Airport (MRS)21 km from centre125 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridMarseille
City population3,506,730886,040
People per km²5,8013,683
Museums within 10 km8827
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre10693
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Madrid or Marseille 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.