VacationSelector

Madrid or San Jose?

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 nightlife with your weighting.

San Jose
39
match

Wins on year-round weather and beaches & swimming 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 Jose
Beaches & swimming. San Jose leads by 8 points.8
MadridSan Jose
Score08
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km41
Coast distance305 km14 km
Water distance14 km
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 42 points.42
MadridSan Jose
Score8341
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,508313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2816
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 49 points.49
MadridSan Jose
Score7526
Museums within 10 km9720
Museums within 2 km of centre599
Share of museums within 2 km %6145
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 50 points.50
MadridSan Jose
Score8131
Drinking venues within 4 km2,414231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,49888
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6238
Nightclubs within 4 km34116
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 7 points.7
MadridSan Jose
Score6370
Protected land share 50 km %1926
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %10091
Park area within 2 km187 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 44 points.44
MadridSan Jose
Score7733
Tourist attractions within 2 km612
Park area within 2 km187 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 61 points.61
MadridSan Jose
Score7514
Notable places within 2 km2889
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 28 points.28
MadridSan Jose
Score7143
Price level global60.8100
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 13 points.13
MadridSan Jose
Score7285
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm0 mm to 78 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
San Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Madrid
No coastline within reach
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Jose
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 Jose
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 Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridSan Jose
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
TokyoHND, NRT
13 h 20 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 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 · 57 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 20 m
€121-231
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
12 h 30 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
SeoulICN, GMP
12 h 25 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 57 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
10 h 5 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 20 m
€356-444
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
16 h 0 m
€1,005-1027
1 stop
SFO · 57 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 Jose
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 m25 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridSan Jose
City population3,506,7301,013,240
People per km²5,8012,167
Museums within 10 km8819
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre10630
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 Jose 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.