VacationSelector

Madrid or Valencia?

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, 2 points apart

Madrid
66
match

Wins on good for families and sights concentration with your weighting.

Valencia
64
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and 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 what you can reach on foot: museums, attractions and late-night places sit close together, and there are theme parks within reach that Valencia cannot match.

Choose Valencia if you want to swim and want a longer mild season: beaches close to the city, sea above 21°C for five summer and autumn months, and winter days near 17°C rather than cold ones.

Scoreboard

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

MadridValencia
Beaches & swimming. Valencia leads by 67 points.67
MadridValencia
Score067
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km412
Coast distance305 km3 km
Water distance—3 km
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 5 points.5
MadridValencia
Score8378
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,5081,995
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2833
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 20 points.20
MadridValencia
Score7555
Museums within 10 km9759
Museums within 2 km of centre5926
Share of museums within 2 km %6144
Unesco sites within 50 km42
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 11 points.11
MadridValencia
Score8170
Drinking venues within 4 km2,4141,513
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498957
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6263
Nightclubs within 4 km341108
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 10 points.10
MadridValencia
Score6353
Protected land share 50 km %1910
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10064
Park area within 2 km187 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 35 points.35
MadridValencia
Score7742
Tourist attractions within 2 km6112
Park area within 2 km187 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km30
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 23 points.23
MadridValencia
Score7552
Notable places within 2 km28878
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid and Valencia are level on 71.
MadridValencia
Score7171
Price level global60.860.8
Daily budget€122€122
Year-round weather. Valencia leads by 12 points.12
MadridValencia
Score7284
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C16.8 °C to 30.6 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm7 mm to 70 mm
Dry months78
0255075100

Where they differ

Madrid is the stronger city for filling days on foot. It has about three times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, roughly twice as many museums, and 4 UNESCO-listed sites within day-trip reach against Valencia's 2. Families get many more attractions near the centre, twice the park space, and 3 theme parks where Valencia has none.

Valencia answers with the coast: 12 beaches nearby against Madrid's 4, and a sea that reaches 26°C at its warmest, which Madrid has no equivalent to.

Where they are alike

Eating out is the closest call between them. Madrid has about twice as many restaurants near the centre, while Valencia offers a somewhat wider range of kitchens, so neither leaves you short of choice.

Both also have countryside within reach, with 19% of the land around Madrid protected against 10% around Valencia, and in both cities the places to drink cluster near the centre rather than scattering. Annual sunshine is near-identical, close to 2750 hours in each.

Which traveller are you?

Travelling with children: Madrid. It has many more attractions near the centre, roughly twice the park space, and 3 theme parks within reach, where Valencia has none at all.

Swimmers and beach days: Valencia, clearly. 12 beaches near the city against Madrid's 4, and sea warm enough to swim in for five months, topping out at 26°C.

Museums, sights and going out: Madrid. About twice as many museums, three times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, and far more bars and clubs, most of them close in.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value comparison between these two carries no information. It is a national price level, identical for both by construction, and the €122 a day beside it is one estimate for the country rather than a measurement of either city. Nothing here tells you which trip costs less.

Warm months and dry months are not the same months. Valencia's September stays warm but is its wettest at 70mm, and Madrid's October brings 64mm just as the heat eases. Madrid's 4 nearby beaches come with no sea temperature at all, so they are not a swimming option in Valencia's sense.

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
Valencia
17
17
19
21
24
28
30
31
28
25
20
17
Sea temperature, °C
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Valencia
14
14
14
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Valencia
38
30
40
33
36
26
7
15
70
66
52
48
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Valencia
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
Valencia
6
6
7
8
9
9
10
10
8
7
6
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre). Valencia: 1991-2020 normals, Valencia (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Madrid suits May and September, near 23°C and 27°C, when walking the city is comfortable all day. High summer is very dry, under 10mm a month, but the heat is serious. Autumn is the wet stretch, peaking at 64mm.

Valencia works over a longer season. April to June runs 21-28°C with light rain, and the sea passes 21°C in early summer. Winters stay mild, near 17°C. September is still warm but is the wettest month, at 70mm.

Getting there

Flying fromMadridValencia
PalmaPMI
1 h 20 m
€56-238
MAD · 14 km
1 h 0 m
€32-53
VLC · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
2 h 15 m
€80-167
VLC · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
1 h 55 m
€103-131
VLC · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
2 h 0 m
€70-117
VLC · 9 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
€53-86
MAD · 14 km
1 h 50 m
€51-87
VLC · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 14 km
2 h 25 m
€155-178
VLC · 9 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
2 h 50 m
€109-153
MAD · 14 km
3 h 0 m
€100-186
1 stop
VLC · 9 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 15 m
€99-166
MAD · 14 km
2 h 15 m
€110-139
VLC · 9 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
2 h 0 m
€72-115
VLC · 9 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 10 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 9 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 2026-09, 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

MeasureMadridValencia
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 m15 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsValencia Airport (VLC)9 km from centre107 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridValencia
City population3,506,730840,792
People per km²5,8016,242
Museums within 10 km8846
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km42
Distinct cuisines in the centre10692
Swim season, months above 21 °C–5 months

Where else could you go?

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