VacationSelector

Madrid or Montpellier?

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 museums & heritage and nightlife with your weighting.

Montpellier
47
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.

MadridMontpellier
Beaches & swimming. Montpellier leads by 32 points.32
MadridMontpellier
Score032
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km48
Coast distance305 km9 km
Water distance—9 km
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 18 points.18
MadridMontpellier
Score8365
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,508737
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2834
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 49 points.49
MadridMontpellier
Score7526
Museums within 10 km9714
Museums within 2 km of centre593
Share of museums within 2 km %6121
Unesco sites within 50 km42
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 43 points.43
MadridMontpellier
Score8138
Drinking venues within 4 km2,414318
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498265
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6283
Nightclubs within 4 km34125
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 20 points.20
MadridMontpellier
Score6343
Protected land share 50 km %1915
Landscape blanket share 50 km %010
Land share of disc %10070
Park area within 2 km187 hectares55 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 33 points.33
MadridMontpellier
Score7744
Tourist attractions within 2 km618
Park area within 2 km187 hectares55 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km37
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 37 points.37
MadridMontpellier
Score7538
Notable places within 2 km28835
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 9 points.9
MadridMontpellier
Score7162
Price level global60.873.7
Daily budget€122€160
Year-round weather. Montpellier leads by 2 points.2
MadridMontpellier
Score7274
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C12 °C to 29.6 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm17 mm to 93 mm
Dry months75
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
Montpellier
12
13
16
19
23
27
30
29
25
21
16
13
Sea temperature, °C
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Montpellier
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
Montpellier
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
10
8
6
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre). Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridMontpellier
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 15 m
€40-87
MAD · 14 km
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 109 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 20 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MunichMUC
2 h 25 m
€193-236
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 20 m
€121-231
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
TunisTUN
2 h 10 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
2 h 50 m
€109-153
MAD · 14 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 10 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
SeoulICN, GMP
12 h 25 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 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

MeasureMadridMontpellier
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 m7 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridMontpellier
City population3,506,730310,240
People per km²5,8015,452
Museums within 10 km8814
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km42
Distinct cuisines in the centre10665
Swim season, months above 21 °C–2 months

Where else could you go?

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