VacationSelector

Madrid or Toledo?

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 nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Toledo
40
match

Wins on year-round weather with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Madrid if the trip is built around eating out, going out and museums: it has the wider choice in all three, along with more parks, attractions and protected countryside within day-trip reach.

Choose Toledo if you want a small, walkable historic town and quieter streets, with warmer and drier weather, summer highs of 35°C and light rain in most months of the year.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

MadridToledo
Beaches & swimming. Madrid and Toledo are level on 0.
MadridToledo
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km41
Coast distance305 km320 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 59 points.59
MadridToledo
Score8324
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,508249
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km287
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 29 points.29
MadridToledo
Score7546
Museums within 10 km9719
Museums within 2 km of centre5919
Share of museums within 2 km %61100
Unesco sites within 50 km42
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 64 points.64
MadridToledo
Score8117
Drinking venues within 4 km2,414120
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498115
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6296
Nightclubs within 4 km3415
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 35 points.35
MadridToledo
Score6328
Protected land share 50 km %194
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km187 hectares59 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 23 points.23
MadridToledo
Score7754
Tourist attractions within 2 km6132
Park area within 2 km187 hectares59 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 29 points.29
MadridToledo
Score7546
Notable places within 2 km28855
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid and Toledo are level on 71.
MadridToledo
Score7171
Price level global60.860.8
Daily budget€122€122
Year-round weather. Toledo leads by 2 points.2
MadridToledo
Score7274
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C11.9 °C to 35.1 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm6 mm to 49 mm
Dry months711
0255075100

Where they differ

Madrid has many times as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider spread of kitchens, and the same gap runs through its bars and clubs. It has many times as many museums, more UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, more park space and more theme parks; 19% of the land around it is protected, against 4% around Toledo.

Toledo is warmer and drier, with highs of 12-35°C across the year against Madrid's 10-33°C, and 11 months at 40mm of rain or less against Madrid's 7.

Where they are alike

Neither is a swimming destination. Both sit inland, and neither has a month with sea at 21°C or more, so a beach day means a journey; Madrid counts 4 beaches within reach against Toledo's 1, but neither is worth choosing for that.

They also share a weather profile: dry, sunny years, hot Julys at 33-35°C, and winters that are cool rather than cold, at 10-12°C by day.

Which traveller are you?

If your days revolve around long meals and late bars, Madrid is the clear choice: many times as many restaurants near the centre, a far wider spread of kitchens, and the same gap again in bars and clubs.

Families do better in Madrid too, with more tourist attractions near the centre, far more park space and 3 theme parks within reach against Toledo's 1.

A traveller after a compact historic centre and a slower pace should take Toledo: 2 UNESCO-listed places, an old town covered on foot, and warmer, drier days than Madrid through most of the year.

What the numbers don't tell you

Both cities carry the same value rating because it is a national price level rather than a measurement of either place; the comparison between them carries no information about which trip costs less. The €122 daily budget is one national estimate, not a trait of Madrid or Toledo.

Toledo's edge on year-round weather comes mostly from being hotter, and in high summer highs of 35°C make walking the town uncomfortable, so the driest months are also the hardest ones. The beaches counted near either city are not swimming either: no month reaches sea of 21°C or more.

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
Toledo
12
14
18
21
25
31
35
35
29
23
16
12
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Toledo
26
25
33
40
39
19
6
9
21
49
38
35
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Toledo
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
Toledo
5
6
7
8
10
11
13
12
9
7
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre). Toledo: 1991-2020 normals, Toledo (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Madrid peaks in June, with highs of 29°C and rain falling to 20mm, and again in September at 27°C, once the summer heat has dropped back. Midsummer is hotter and drier still, and October brings the wettest month of its year, at 64mm.

Toledo works earlier and later: May at 25°C with 39mm of rain, and an autumn that stays drier than Madrid's. Midsummer highs of 35°C make walking the old town hard work.

Getting there

Flying fromMadridToledo
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 80 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 80 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
2 h 50 m
€109-153
MAD · 14 km
2 h 50 m
€109-153
MAD · 80 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 20 m
€56-238
MAD · 14 km
1 h 20 m
€56-238
MAD · 80 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 80 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 80 km
BogotaBOG
10 h 5 m
€963-1395
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
10 h 5 m
€963-1395
2 stops
MAD · 80 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 80 km
DohaDOH
6 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 80 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
11 h 30 m
€638-793
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
11 h 30 m
€638-793
2 stops
MAD · 80 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

MeasureMadridToledo
Official languageSpanishSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation663 m523 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)80 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridToledo
City population3,506,73087,216
People per km²5,801376
Museums within 10 km8813
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km42
Distinct cuisines in the centre10613

Where else could you go?

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