VacationSelector

Madrid or Valletta?

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 good for families with your weighting.

Valletta
60
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.

Scoreboard

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

MadridValletta
Beaches & swimming. Valletta leads by 77 points.77
MadridValletta
Score077
Swim season months06
Beaches 10 km422
Coast distance305 km0 km
Water distance—0 km
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 25 points.25
MadridValletta
Score8358
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,508416
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2835
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 14 points.14
MadridValletta
Score7561
Museums within 10 km9746
Museums within 2 km of centre5929
Share of museums within 2 km %6163
Unesco sites within 50 km43
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 34 points.34
MadridValletta
Score8147
Drinking venues within 4 km2,414522
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498250
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6248
Nightclubs within 4 km34127
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 17 points.17
MadridValletta
Score6346
Protected land share 50 km %19—
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %1006
Park area within 2 km187 hectares24 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 31 points.31
MadridValletta
Score7746
Tourist attractions within 2 km6132
Park area within 2 km187 hectares24 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 14 points.14
MadridValletta
Score7561
Notable places within 2 km288133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 2 points.2
MadridValletta
Score7169
Price level global60.862.8
Daily budget€122€129
Year-round weather. Valletta leads by 7 points.7
MadridValletta
Score7279
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C15.7 °C to 31.9 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm0 mm to 90 mm
Dry months76
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
Valletta
16
16
17
20
24
29
32
32
29
25
21
17
Sea temperature, °C
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Valletta
16
15
15
16
19
22
25
27
26
24
21
18
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Valletta
80
72
39
19
10
5
0
10
63
74
90
85
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Valletta
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
Valletta
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
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). Valletta: 1991-2020 normals, Luqa (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridValletta
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
3 h 10 m
€91-131
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
1 h 30 m
€37-71
MLA · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
2 h 45 m
€99-132
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
€53-86
MAD · 14 km
2 h 5 m
€62-92
MLA · 6 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
2 h 5 m
€56-95
MLA · 6 km
MunichMUC
2 h 25 m
€193-236
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
2 h 20 m
€165-259
MLA · 6 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 15 m
€99-166
MAD · 14 km
2 h 50 m
€83-115
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 20 m
€121-231
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 20 m
€356-444
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
9 h 20 m
no fares
MLA · 6 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

MeasureMadridValletta
Official languageSpanishEnglish, Maltese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation663 m56 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsMalta International Airport (MLA)6 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridValletta
City population3,506,7306,444
People per km²5,8018,055
Museums within 10 km8815
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km43
Distinct cuisines in the centre10655
Swim season, months above 21 °C–6 months

Where else could you go?

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