VacationSelector

Madrid or Sao Paulo?

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 sights concentration with your weighting.

Sao Paulo
56
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.

MadridSao Paulo
Beaches & swimming. Madrid and Sao Paulo are level on 0.
MadridSao Paulo
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km40
Coast distance305 km51 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 10 points.10
MadridSao Paulo
Score8373
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,5081,735
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2827
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 32 points.32
MadridSao Paulo
Score7543
Museums within 10 km9782
Museums within 2 km of centre5926
Share of museums within 2 km %6132
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 9 points.9
MadridSao Paulo
Score8172
Drinking venues within 4 km2,4141,747
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498896
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6251
Nightclubs within 4 km341118
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 12 points.12
MadridSao Paulo
Score6351
Protected land share 50 km %1926
Landscape blanket share 50 km %015
Land share of disc %10095
Park area within 2 km187 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 22 points.22
MadridSao Paulo
Score7755
Tourist attractions within 2 km6138
Park area within 2 km187 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 25 points.25
MadridSao Paulo
Score7550
Notable places within 2 km28868
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sao Paulo leads by 10 points.10
MadridSao Paulo
Score7181
Price level global60.846.1
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Sao Paulo leads by 11 points.11
MadridSao Paulo
Score7283
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C22.8 °C to 29.2 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm26 mm to 297 mm
Dry months71
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
Sao Paulo
28
29
28
27
24
23
23
25
25
27
27
28
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Sao Paulo
297
259
206
89
64
55
53
26
82
128
146
234
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sao Paulo
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
Sao Paulo
4
6
6
5
5
5
6
6
5
6
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre). Sao Paulo: 1991-2020 normals, Sao Paulo (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridSao Paulo
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
12 h 30 m
€1,194-1343
MAD · 14 km
2 h 40 m
€281-355
GRU · 21 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
BogotaBOG
10 h 5 m
€963-1395
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
5 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
Rio de JaneiroGIG, SDU, RRJ
10 h 15 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
1 h 5 m
€190-227
GRU · 21 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
9 h 40 m
€576-611
GRU · 21 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
DohaDOH
6 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
14 h 35 m
no fares
GRU · 21 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
11 h 30 m
€638-793
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
21 h 20 m
€1,139-1567
2 stops
GRU · 21 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

MeasureMadridSao Paulo
Official languageSpanishPortuguese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Brazilian Real (BRL)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCN60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-3
Emergency number112Police 190, ambulance 192, fire 193
Elevation663 m760 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsSão Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU)21 km from centre102 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridSao Paulo
City population3,506,73011,451,999
People per km²5,8017,519
Museums within 10 km8890
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre10659

Where else could you go?

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