VacationSelector

Madrid or Santiago?

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 good for families with your weighting.

Santiago
55
match

Wins on year-round weather and value for money 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.

MadridSantiago
Beaches & swimming. Madrid and Santiago are level on 0.
MadridSantiago
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km40
Coast distance305 km89 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 11 points.11
MadridSantiago
Score8372
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,5081,317
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2832
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 30 points.30
MadridSantiago
Score7545
Museums within 10 km9787
Museums within 2 km of centre5930
Share of museums within 2 km %6134
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 20 points.20
MadridSantiago
Score8161
Drinking venues within 4 km2,414912
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498542
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6259
Nightclubs within 4 km341112
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 11 points.11
MadridSantiago
Score6352
Protected land share 50 km %1917
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km187 hectares88 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 28 points.28
MadridSantiago
Score7749
Tourist attractions within 2 km6112
Park area within 2 km187 hectares88 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km33
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 27 points.27
MadridSantiago
Score7548
Notable places within 2 km28862
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Santiago leads by 10 points.10
MadridSantiago
Score7181
Price level global60.846.2
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Santiago leads by 13 points.13
MadridSantiago
Score7285
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C14.3 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm0 mm to 87 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
Santiago
28
27
26
21
18
15
14
16
19
22
25
27
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Santiago
0
2
5
16
46
87
52
44
27
11
6
3
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Santiago
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
Santiago
11
9
8
6
5
3
4
5
6
8
9
11

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre). Santiago: 1991-2020 normals, Santiago Q. Normal (3.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridSantiago
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
12 h 30 m
€1,194-1343
MAD · 14 km
2 h 0 m
€140-179
SCL · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
14 h 25 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
14 h 25 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
BogotaBOG
10 h 5 m
€963-1395
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
5 h 40 m
€340-367
1 stop
SCL · 14 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
10 h 30 m
€636-955
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
3 h 45 m
€267-313
SCL · 14 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
13 h 45 m
€774-838
2 stops
SCL · 14 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
11 h 20 m
€861-905
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
MontevideoMVD
12 h 20 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
2 h 15 m
€224-241
1 stop
SCL · 14 km
LimaLIM
11 h 50 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
MiamiMIA, OPF
9 h 0 m
€340-544
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
SCL · 14 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

MeasureMadridSantiago
Official languageSpanishSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Chilean Peso (CLP)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCL220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-4, UTC-3 in summer
Emergency number112Police 133/134, ambulance 131, fire 132
Elevation663 m575 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsComodoro Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport (SCL)14 km from centre68 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridSantiago
City population3,506,7306,257,516
People per km²5,8017,468
Museums within 10 km8854
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre10664

Where else could you go?

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