VacationSelector

Madrid or Salzburg?

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 nightlife and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Salzburg
42
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.

MadridSalzburg
Beaches & swimming. Madrid and Salzburg are level on 0.
MadridSalzburg
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km49
Coast distance305 km653 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 34 points.34
MadridSalzburg
Score8349
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,508348
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2823
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 15 points.15
MadridSalzburg
Score7560
Museums within 10 km9742
Museums within 2 km of centre5927
Share of museums within 2 km %6164
Unesco sites within 50 km43
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 45 points.45
MadridSalzburg
Score8136
Drinking venues within 4 km2,414294
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498241
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6282
Nightclubs within 4 km34116
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 36 points.36
MadridSalzburg
Score6327
Protected land share 50 km %196
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km187 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 29 points.29
MadridSalzburg
Score7748
Tourist attractions within 2 km6117
Park area within 2 km187 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km34
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 29 points.29
MadridSalzburg
Score7546
Notable places within 2 km28854
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 12 points.12
MadridSalzburg
Score7159
Price level global60.876.9
Daily budget€122€160
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 18 points.18
MadridSalzburg
Score7254
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C3.4 °C to 24.9 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm47 mm to 168 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
Salzburg
3
6
10
16
20
23
25
25
20
15
8
4
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Salzburg
62
47
83
80
142
168
159
167
127
90
70
67
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Salzburg
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
Salzburg
3
3
5
6
7
7
7
7
5
4
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre). Salzburg: 1991-2020 normals, Salzburg (3.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridSalzburg
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
1 h 30 m
€183-250
MUC · 112 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
1 h 55 m
€166-216
MUC · 112 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
1 h 30 m
€141-202
MUC · 112 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 15 m
€40-87
MAD · 14 km
3 h 0 m
€253-306
1 stop
MUC · 112 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
1 h 55 m
€186-283
SZG · 3 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
€53-86
MAD · 14 km
1 h 5 m
€111-182
MUC · 112 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
8 h 15 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
12 h 40 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
10 h 30 m
€636-955
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
12 h 15 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
DohaDOH
6 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
5 h 45 m
no fares
MUC · 112 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

MeasureMadridSalzburg
Official languageSpanishGerman, Austrian Sign Language
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation663 m424 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsSalzburg Airport (SZG)3 km from centre62 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridSalzburg
City population3,506,730155,021
People per km²5,8012,360
Museums within 10 km8838
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km43
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 Salzburg 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. 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.