VacationSelector

Madrid or Ottawa?

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.

Ottawa
43
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.

Scoreboard

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

MadridOttawa
Beaches & swimming. Madrid and Ottawa are level on 0.
MadridOttawa
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km49
Coast distance305 km423 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 19 points.19
MadridOttawa
Score8364
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,508684
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2834
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 43 points.43
MadridOttawa
Score7532
Museums within 10 km9715
Museums within 2 km of centre598
Share of museums within 2 km %6153
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 37 points.37
MadridOttawa
Score8144
Drinking venues within 4 km2,414432
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498303
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6270
Nightclubs within 4 km34135
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 22 points.22
MadridOttawa
Score6341
Protected land share 50 km %198
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km187 hectares122 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 31 points.31
MadridOttawa
Score7746
Tourist attractions within 2 km6111
Park area within 2 km187 hectares122 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 25 points.25
MadridOttawa
Score7550
Notable places within 2 km28871
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 17 points.17
MadridOttawa
Score7154
Price level global60.884
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 19 points.19
MadridOttawa
Score7253
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C-4.9 °C to 27 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm53 mm to 94 mm
Dry months70
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
Ottawa
-5
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
14
6
-2
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Ottawa
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
Ottawa
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre). Ottawa: 1991-2020 normals, Ottawa CDA RCS (5.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridOttawa
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 50 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 10 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
50 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
CancunCUN
10 h 0 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
Punta CanaPUJ
8 h 25 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
MiamiMIA, OPF
9 h 0 m
€340-544
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
8 h 35 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
8 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 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

MeasureMadridOttawa
Official languageSpanishFrench, English
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation663 m70 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridOttawa
City population3,506,7301,017,449
People per km²5,801366
Museums within 10 km8820
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre10662

Where else could you go?

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