VacationSelector

Madrid or Thessaloniki?

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 good for families and places to eat with your weighting.

Thessaloniki
59
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

MadridThessaloniki
Beaches & swimming. Thessaloniki leads by 55 points.55
MadridThessaloniki
Score055
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km44
Coast distance305 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 33 points.33
MadridThessaloniki
Score8350
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,508640
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2815
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 26 points.26
MadridThessaloniki
Score7549
Museums within 10 km9734
Museums within 2 km of centre5922
Share of museums within 2 km %6165
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 14 points.14
MadridThessaloniki
Score8167
Drinking venues within 4 km2,4141,407
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498805
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6257
Nightclubs within 4 km34161
Nature & day trips. Thessaloniki leads by 2 points.2
MadridThessaloniki
Score6365
Protected land share 50 km %1925
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10083
Park area within 2 km187 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 36 points.36
MadridThessaloniki
Score7741
Tourist attractions within 2 km6116
Park area within 2 km187 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 19 points.19
MadridThessaloniki
Score7556
Notable places within 2 km28898
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Thessaloniki leads by 3 points.3
MadridThessaloniki
Score7174
Price level global60.855.8
Daily budget€122€125
Year-round weather. Madrid and Thessaloniki are level on 72.
MadridThessaloniki
Score7272
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C9.7 °C to 32.1 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm21 mm to 56 mm
Dry months79
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
Thessaloniki
10
11
15
19
25
30
32
32
27
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Thessaloniki
14
13
13
15
19
23
26
27
25
21
18
15
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Thessaloniki
35
32
38
36
44
30
23
21
33
41
38
56
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Thessaloniki
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
Thessaloniki
4
4
6
6
9
11
11
10
8
6
4
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre). Thessaloniki: 1991-2020 normals, Thessaloniki Airport (14 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridThessaloniki
AthensATH
3 h 30 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
1 h 0 m
€97-118
SKG · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
3 h 15 m
€95-156
SKG · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
2 h 50 m
€98-154
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
1 h 45 m
€117-203
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
MunichMUC
2 h 25 m
€193-236
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
2 h 10 m
€188-242
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 20 m
€121-231
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
2 h 30 m
€119-127
SKG · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 14 km
2 h 55 m
€225-285
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
€53-86
MAD · 14 km
2 h 10 m
€129-217
SKG · 14 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
2 h 20 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
2 h 40 m
€127-199
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 50 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
2 h 20 m
€208-315
1 stop
SKG · 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 2026-08 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

MeasureMadridThessaloniki
Official languageSpanishGreek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation663 m6 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsThessaloniki Macedonia International Airport (SKG)14 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridThessaloniki
City population3,506,730309,617
People per km²5,80116,042
Museums within 10 km8831
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre10645
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

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