VacationSelector

Madrid or Seattle?

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.

Seattle
52
match

Wins on 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.

MadridSeattle
Beaches & swimming. Seattle leads by 60 points.60
MadridSeattle
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km4100
Coast distance305 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 8 points.8
MadridSeattle
Score8375
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,5081,460
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2835
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 39 points.39
MadridSeattle
Score7536
Museums within 10 km9728
Museums within 2 km of centre5917
Share of museums within 2 km %6161
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 24 points.24
MadridSeattle
Score8157
Drinking venues within 4 km2,414873
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498696
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6280
Nightclubs within 4 km34134
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 23 points.23
MadridSeattle
Score6340
Protected land share 50 km %199
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10080
Park area within 2 km187 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 31 points.31
MadridSeattle
Score7746
Tourist attractions within 2 km6117
Park area within 2 km187 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 23 points.23
MadridSeattle
Score7552
Notable places within 2 km28876
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 28 points.28
MadridSeattle
Score7143
Price level global60.8100
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 11 points.11
MadridSeattle
Score7261
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C7.8 °C to 24.9 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm15 mm to 160 mm
Dry months73
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
Seattle
8
10
12
15
19
21
25
25
22
15
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Seattle
8
8
8
9
10
11
12
12
11
10
9
9
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Seattle
147
96
106
81
48
37
15
25
41
99
160
147
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Seattle
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
Seattle
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). Seattle: 1991-2020 normals, Seattle-Tacoma Airport (17.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridSeattle
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 40 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
2 h 30 m
€111-203
SEA · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
5 h 15 m
€300-424
SEA · 18 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
MiamiMIA, OPF
9 h 0 m
€340-544
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
5 h 50 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
SeoulICN, GMP
12 h 25 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 20 m
€356-444
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
14 h 40 m
€1,006-1077
2 stops
SEA · 18 km
GuadalajaraGDL
11 h 40 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 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

MeasureMadridSeattle
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 m40 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsSeattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)18 km from centre135 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridSeattle
City population3,506,730737,015
People per km²5,8011,996
Museums within 10 km8827
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre10678
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 Seattle 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.