VacationSelector

Madrid or Stockholm?

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 nature & day trips and good for families with your weighting.

Stockholm
62
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration 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.

MadridStockholm
Beaches & swimming. Stockholm leads by 60 points.60
MadridStockholm
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km473
Coast distance305 km0 km
Water distance—0 km
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 7 points.7
MadridStockholm
Score8376
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,5081,558
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2836
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 6 points.6
MadridStockholm
Score7569
Museums within 10 km9774
Museums within 2 km of centre5947
Share of museums within 2 km %6164
Unesco sites within 50 km43
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 17 points.17
MadridStockholm
Score8164
Drinking venues within 4 km2,4141,090
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498689
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6263
Nightclubs within 4 km341106
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 22 points.22
MadridStockholm
Score6341
Protected land share 50 km %197
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10077
Park area within 2 km187 hectares104 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 20 points.20
MadridStockholm
Score7757
Tourist attractions within 2 km6123
Park area within 2 km187 hectares104 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Stockholm leads by 4 points.4
MadridStockholm
Score7579
Notable places within 2 km288357
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 14 points.14
MadridStockholm
Score7157
Price level global60.880.3
Daily budget€122€169
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 19 points.19
MadridStockholm
Score7253
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C1 °C to 23.6 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm27 mm to 66 mm
Dry months75
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
Stockholm
1
1
5
11
17
21
24
22
17
10
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Stockholm
3
2
2
3
7
12
16
17
14
10
7
5
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Stockholm
37
29
27
29
34
61
60
66
53
51
47
47
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Stockholm
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
Stockholm
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
6
3
1
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre). Stockholm: 1991-2020 normals, Stockholm Observatoriet (26.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridStockholm
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
2 h 25 m
€89-139
ARN · 36 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
2 h 30 m
€91-121
ARN · 36 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 14 km
2 h 0 m
€153-185
ARN · 36 km
CopenhagenCPH
3 h 5 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
1 h 20 m
€84-99
ARN · 36 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 20 m
€56-238
MAD · 14 km
3 h 35 m
€193
ARN · 36 km
OsloOSL, TRF
3 h 30 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
1 h 5 m
€77-102
1 stop
ARN · 36 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
8 h 5 m
no fares
ARN · 36 km
DohaDOH
6 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
6 h 5 m
no fares
ARN · 36 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
12 h 40 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
10 h 25 m
€526-560
1 stop
ARN · 36 km
Punta CanaPUJ
8 h 25 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
ARN · 36 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

MeasureMadridStockholm
Official languageSpanishSwedish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swedish Krona (SEK)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation663 m22 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsStockholm-Arlanda Airport (ARN)36 km from centre172 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridStockholm
City population3,506,730984,748
People per km²5,8015,260
Museums within 10 km88266
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km43
Distinct cuisines in the centre10681
Swim season, months above 21 °C–None

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Madrid or Stockholm 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.