VacationSelector

Madrid or Mexico City?

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 good for families and sights concentration with your weighting.

Mexico City
62
match

Wins on year-round weather and value for money 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.

MadridMexico City
Beaches & swimming. Madrid and Mexico City are level on 0.
MadridMexico City
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km44
Coast distance305 km247 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 17 points.17
MadridMexico City
Score8366
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,5082,179
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2815
Museums & heritage. Mexico City leads by 4 points.4
MadridMexico City
Score7579
Museums within 10 km97138
Museums within 2 km of centre5965
Share of museums within 2 km %6147
Unesco sites within 50 km46
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 3 points.3
MadridMexico City
Score8178
Drinking venues within 4 km2,4142,156
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498926
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6243
Nightclubs within 4 km341198
Nature & day trips. Madrid and Mexico City are level on 63.
MadridMexico City
Score6363
Protected land share 50 km %1930
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km187 hectares32 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 27 points.27
MadridMexico City
Score7750
Tourist attractions within 2 km6123
Park area within 2 km187 hectares32 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km34
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 21 points.21
MadridMexico City
Score7554
Notable places within 2 km28888
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Mexico City leads by 5 points.5
MadridMexico City
Score7176
Price level global60.854.2
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Mexico City leads by 18 points.18
MadridMexico City
Score7290
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C22.2 °C to 27.9 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm3 mm to 186 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
Mexico City
22
25
26
28
27
26
25
25
24
23
23
22
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Mexico City
7
3
19
27
53
127
176
186
144
79
10
9
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Mexico City
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
Mexico City
8
8
9
8
8
6
6
6
5
6
7
7

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre). Mexico City: 1991-2020 normals, Mexico Central, D. F. (7.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridMexico City
BogotaBOG
10 h 5 m
€963-1395
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
4 h 25 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
11 h 30 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
4 h 40 m
€335-379
MEX · 7 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
11 h 50 m
€883-934
2 stops
MEX · 7 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
12 h 40 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
CancunCUN
10 h 0 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
2 h 10 m
€123-162
MEX · 7 km
GuadalajaraGDL
11 h 40 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 20 m
€356-444
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
17 h 30 m
€1,075-1211
2 stops
MEX · 7 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
11 h 30 m
€638-793
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
15 h 20 m
€1,089-1205
3 stops
MEX · 7 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

MeasureMadridMexico City
Official languageSpanishSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Mexican Peso (MXN)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB127 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-6
Emergency number112911
Elevation663 m2,240 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsMexico City Benito Juárez International Airport (MEX)7 km from centre95 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days9 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridMexico City
City population3,506,7309,209,944
People per km²5,8016,202
Museums within 10 km88108
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km46
Distinct cuisines in the centre10650

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Madrid or Mexico City 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.