VacationSelector

Madrid or San Diego?

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.

San Diego
58
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.

MadridSan Diego
Beaches & swimming. San Diego leads by 63 points.63
MadridSan Diego
Score063
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km442
Coast distance305 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 20 points.20
MadridSan Diego
Score8363
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,508823
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2827
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 31 points.31
MadridSan Diego
Score7544
Museums within 10 km9759
Museums within 2 km of centre5930
Share of museums within 2 km %6151
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 31 points.31
MadridSan Diego
Score8150
Drinking venues within 4 km2,414615
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498408
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6266
Nightclubs within 4 km34131
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 8 points.8
MadridSan Diego
Score6355
Protected land share 50 km %196
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10052
Park area within 2 km187 hectares308 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 2 points.2
MadridSan Diego
Score7775
Tourist attractions within 2 km6140
Park area within 2 km187 hectares308 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km33
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 35 points.35
MadridSan Diego
Score7540
Notable places within 2 km28840
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 28 points.28
MadridSan Diego
Score7143
Price level global60.8100
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 16 points.16
MadridSan Diego
Score7288
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C18.6 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm0 mm to 56 mm
Dry months79
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
San Diego
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
23
21
19
Sea temperature, °C
Madrid
No coastline within reach
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
San Diego
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). San Diego: 1991-2020 normals, San Diego International Airport (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridSan Diego
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
San FranciscoSFO
11 h 40 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
1 h 30 m
€121-158
SAN · 3 km
BostonBOS, PSM
7 h 5 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
5 h 35 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
8 h 35 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
10 h 5 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 14 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
MunichMUC
2 h 25 m
€193-236
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
12 h 5 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
11 h 20 m
€861-905
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
TIJ · 26 km
TokyoHND, NRT
13 h 20 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 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

MeasureMadridSan Diego
Official languageSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation663 m129 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridSan Diego
City population3,506,7301,386,932
People per km²5,8011,438
Museums within 10 km8826
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre10644
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month

Where else could you go?

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