VacationSelector

Madrid or Tirana?

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 places to eat with your weighting.

Tirana
51
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.

MadridTirana
Beaches & swimming. Tirana leads by 17 points.17
MadridTirana
Score017
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km40
Coast distance305 km26 km
Water distance26 km
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 28 points.28
MadridTirana
Score8355
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,508572
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2822
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 50 points.50
MadridTirana
Score7525
Museums within 10 km9712
Museums within 2 km of centre598
Share of museums within 2 km %6167
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 23 points.23
MadridTirana
Score8158
Drinking venues within 4 km2,414945
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498683
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6272
Nightclubs within 4 km34129
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 14 points.14
MadridTirana
Score6349
Protected land share 50 km %1911
Landscape blanket share 50 km %03
Land share of disc %10083
Park area within 2 km187 hectares147 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 25 points.25
MadridTirana
Score7752
Tourist attractions within 2 km6121
Park area within 2 km187 hectares147 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km30
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 22 points.22
MadridTirana
Score7553
Notable places within 2 km28883
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tirana leads by 13 points.13
MadridTirana
Score7184
Price level global60.842.6
Daily budget€122€76
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 5 points.5
MadridTirana
Score7267
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C11.6 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm43 mm to 172 mm
Dry months70
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
Tirana
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Tirana
15
14
14
16
19
23
24
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Tirana
143
117
116
103
84
66
43
55
78
114
172
148
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Tirana
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
Tirana
4
4
5
6
9
10
12
11
9
7
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). Tirana: 1961-1990 normals, Tirana (3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridTirana
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
2 h 30 m
€73-102
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
2 h 55 m
€62-138
TIA · 13 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
€53-86
MAD · 14 km
1 h 50 m
€33-74
TIA · 13 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
2 h 25 m
€74-123
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
1 h 25 m
€30-52
TIA · 13 km
KatowiceKTW
3 h 5 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
1 h 50 m
€73-87
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
3 h 20 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
2 h 5 m
€68-80
TIA · 13 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 15 m
€99-166
MAD · 14 km
2 h 30 m
€97-142
TIA · 13 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 50 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
2 h 40 m
€222-261
TIA · 13 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 50 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
TIA · 13 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

MeasureMadridTirana
Official languageSpanishAlbanian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Lek (ALL)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation663 m110 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsTirana International Airport Mother Teresa (TIA)13 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridTirana
City population3,506,730389,323
People per km²5,8019,314
Museums within 10 km8811
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre10646
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 Tirana 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.