VacationSelector

Madrid or San Francisco?

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 value for money with your weighting.

San Francisco
62
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 Francisco
Beaches & swimming. San Francisco leads by 60 points.60
MadridSan Francisco
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km444
Coast distance305 km2 km
Water distance2 km
Places to eat. Madrid and San Francisco are level on 83.
MadridSan Francisco
Score8383
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,5082,359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2839
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 31 points.31
MadridSan Francisco
Score7544
Museums within 10 km9757
Museums within 2 km of centre5929
Share of museums within 2 km %6151
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 13 points.13
MadridSan Francisco
Score8168
Drinking venues within 4 km2,4141,434
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498928
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6265
Nightclubs within 4 km34197
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 3 points.3
MadridSan Francisco
Score6360
Protected land share 50 km %1917
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %10057
Park area within 2 km187 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 20 points.20
MadridSan Francisco
Score7757
Tourist attractions within 2 km6148
Park area within 2 km187 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 12 points.12
MadridSan Francisco
Score7563
Notable places within 2 km288147
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 28 points.28
MadridSan Francisco
Score7143
Price level global60.8100
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. San Francisco leads by 6 points.6
MadridSan Francisco
Score7278
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C14 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm0 mm to 105 mm
Dry months77
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 Francisco
14
16
18
20
20
22
22
23
23
22
18
14
Sea temperature, °C
Madrid
No coastline within reach
San Francisco
12
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
San Francisco
105
87
91
26
16
5
0
1
7
27
72
87
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Francisco
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
San Francisco
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 Francisco: 1981-2010 normals, Alameda Naval Air Station (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridSan Francisco
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
TokyoHND, NRT
13 h 20 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 20 m
€121-231
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
12 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 15 m
€40-87
MAD · 14 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
MunichMUC
2 h 25 m
€193-236
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 20 m
€356-444
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 18 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

MeasureMadridSan Francisco
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 m16 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsSan Francisco International Airport (SFO)18 km from centre142 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridSan Francisco
City population3,506,730873,965
People per km²5,8011,455
Museums within 10 km8850
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre106108
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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