VacationSelector

Madrid or Paphos?

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 sights concentration and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Paphos
46
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.

MadridPaphos
Beaches & swimming. Paphos leads by 79 points.79
MadridPaphos
Score079
Swim season months06
Beaches 10 km427
Coast distance305 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 39 points.39
MadridPaphos
Score8344
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,508251
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2822
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 53 points.53
MadridPaphos
Score7522
Museums within 10 km978
Museums within 2 km of centre593
Share of museums within 2 km %6138
Unesco sites within 50 km42
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 51 points.51
MadridPaphos
Score8130
Drinking venues within 4 km2,414224
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498161
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6272
Nightclubs within 4 km34111
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 40 points.40
MadridPaphos
Score6323
Protected land share 50 km %192
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10033
Park area within 2 km187 hectares27 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 35 points.35
MadridPaphos
Score7742
Tourist attractions within 2 km6130
Park area within 2 km187 hectares27 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km30
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 56 points.56
MadridPaphos
Score7519
Notable places within 2 km28812
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 1 points.1
MadridPaphos
Score7170
Price level global60.861.4
Daily budget€122€129
Year-round weather. Paphos leads by 14 points.14
MadridPaphos
Score7286
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C17 °C to 30.8 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm0 mm to 98 mm
Dry months78
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
Paphos
17
17
19
21
25
28
30
31
29
27
23
19
Sea temperature, °C
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Paphos
17
17
17
18
21
24
27
28
27
25
22
19
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Paphos
81
47
29
17
10
2
1
0
5
14
42
98
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Paphos
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
Paphos
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). Paphos: 1991-2020 normals, Paphos Airport (8.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridPaphos
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
4 h 25 m
€125-167
PFO · 8 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 20 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
4 h 5 m
€197-331
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 50 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
1 h 5 m
€149-173
PFO · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
€53-86
MAD · 14 km
3 h 25 m
€125-152
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
LCA · 110 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 14 km
4 h 5 m
€253-340
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 15 m
€99-166
MAD · 14 km
4 h 5 m
€176-392
2 stops
PFO · 8 km
BirminghamBHX
2 h 15 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
PFO · 8 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

MeasureMadridPaphos
Official languageSpanishTurkish, Greek, Modern Greek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG240 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation663 m72 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsPaphos International Airport (PFO)8 km from centre57 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days17 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridPaphos
City population3,506,73035,961
People per km²5,8011,987
Museums within 10 km884
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km42
Distinct cuisines in the centre10636
Swim season, months above 21 °C6 months

Where else could you go?

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