VacationSelector

Madrid or Rio de Janeiro?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Madrid
66
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife with your weighting.

Rio de Janeiro
✓ Best match
69
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.

MadridRio de Janeiro
Beaches & swimming. Rio de Janeiro leads by 100 points.100
MadridRio de Janeiro
Score0100
Swim season months012
Beaches 10 km461
Coast distance305 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 29 points.29
MadridRio de Janeiro
Score8354
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,508804
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2816
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 6 points.6
MadridRio de Janeiro
Score7569
Museums within 10 km97110
Museums within 2 km of centre5951
Share of museums within 2 km %6146
Unesco sites within 50 km43
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 24 points.24
MadridRio de Janeiro
Score8157
Drinking venues within 4 km2,414818
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498509
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6262
Nightclubs within 4 km34150
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 1 points.1
MadridRio de Janeiro
Score6362
Protected land share 50 km %1921
Landscape blanket share 50 km %017
Land share of disc %10057
Park area within 2 km187 hectares113 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 18 points.18
MadridRio de Janeiro
Score7759
Tourist attractions within 2 km6130
Park area within 2 km187 hectares113 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 19 points.19
MadridRio de Janeiro
Score7556
Notable places within 2 km28898
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rio de Janeiro leads by 10 points.10
MadridRio de Janeiro
Score7181
Price level global60.846.1
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Rio de Janeiro leads by 13 points.13
MadridRio de Janeiro
Score7285
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C24 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm42 mm to 232 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
Rio de Janeiro
28
28
28
27
25
24
24
25
25
26
26
27
Sea temperature, °C
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Rio de Janeiro
25
25
25
25
24
23
22
21
21
22
23
24
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Rio de Janeiro
208
151
173
101
71
49
45
42
69
108
220
232
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Rio de Janeiro
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
Rio de Janeiro
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). Rio de Janeiro: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km.

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridRio de Janeiro
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
12 h 30 m
€1,194-1343
MAD · 14 km
3 h 0 m
€212-267
GIG · 12 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
10 h 30 m
€636-955
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
1 h 5 m
€113-134
GIG · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
11 h 30 m
€957-1014
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
11 h 35 m
€996-1109
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
9 h 45 m
€609-699
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
11 h 25 m
€897-908
GIG · 12 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 15 m
€40-87
MAD · 14 km
9 h 45 m
€821-922
GIG · 12 km
SantiagoSCL
13 h 15 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
GIG · 12 km
BogotaBOG
10 h 5 m
€963-1395
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
6 h 0 m
no fares
GIG · 12 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 20 m
€356-444
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
14 h 40 m
€1,154-1306
GIG · 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 2026-09 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

MeasureMadridRio de Janeiro
Official languageSpanishPortuguese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Brazilian Real (BRL)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCN60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-3
Emergency number112Police 190, ambulance 192, fire 193
Elevation663 m31 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsRio de Janeiro Galeão – Tom Jobim International Airport (GIG)12 km from centre59 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridRio de Janeiro
City population3,506,7306,211,223
People per km²5,8014,930
Museums within 10 km8870
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km43
Distinct cuisines in the centre10627
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Madrid or Rio de Janeiro 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. Temperature and rainfall for destinations with no weather station are from the NASA POWER 2001-2020 climatology, derived from MERRA-2. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.