VacationSelector

Madrid or Tokyo?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Too close to call, level with your weighting

Madrid
66
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Tokyo
66
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife 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.

MadridTokyo
Beaches & swimming. Tokyo leads by 21 points.21
MadridTokyo
Score021
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km41
Coast distance305 km5 km
Water distance—5 km
Places to eat. Tokyo leads by 7 points.7
MadridTokyo
Score8390
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,5086,936
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2825
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 9 points.9
MadridTokyo
Score7566
Museums within 10 km97302
Museums within 2 km of centre5952
Share of museums within 2 km %6117
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Tokyo leads by 14 points.14
MadridTokyo
Score8195
Drinking venues within 4 km2,4146,895
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,4983,033
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6244
Nightclubs within 4 km34158
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 5 points.5
MadridTokyo
Score6358
Protected land share 50 km %19—
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10085
Park area within 2 km187 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 6 points.6
MadridTokyo
Score7771
Tourist attractions within 2 km6140
Park area within 2 km187 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km39
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 15 points.15
MadridTokyo
Score7560
Notable places within 2 km288121
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 1 points.1
MadridTokyo
Score7170
Price level global60.862.4
Daily budget€122—
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 8 points.8
MadridTokyo
Score7264
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C10 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm57 mm to 237 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
Tokyo
10
11
14
19
24
26
30
32
28
22
17
12
Sea temperature, °C
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Tokyo
14
13
13
15
18
21
23
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Tokyo
60
57
117
134
140
168
157
155
221
237
97
58
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Tokyo
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
Tokyo
6
6
6
6
6
4
5
6
4
4
5
6

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre). Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridTokyo
SeoulICN, GMP
12 h 25 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
2 h 10 m
€124-187
NRT · 56 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
12 h 5 m
€835-923
HND · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
11 h 55 m
€820-907
1 stop
HND · 18 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
12 h 45 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
2 h 45 m
€296-314
HND · 18 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
12 h 20 m
no fares
HND · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
13 h 30 m
€813-1004
HND · 18 km
Hong KongHKG
13 h 0 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
4 h 10 m
€255-268
NRT · 56 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
11 h 30 m
€638-793
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
3 h 10 m
€333-353
HND · 18 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
11 h 20 m
€861-905
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
13 h 55 m
no fares
NRT · 56 km
DohaDOH
6 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
10 h 25 m
€931-1048
1 stop
HND · 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

MeasureMadridTokyo
Official languageSpanishJapanese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yen (JPY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number112Police 110, fire 119
Elevation663 m6 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsTokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridTokyo
City population3,506,73014,264,798
People per km²5,8016,501
Museums within 10 km88191
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre106125
Swim season, months above 21 °C–4 months

Where else could you go?

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