VacationSelector

Madrid or Zadar?

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 places to eat and nightlife with your weighting.

Zadar
47
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.

MadridZadar
Beaches & swimming. Zadar leads by 73 points.73
MadridZadar
Score073
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km449
Coast distance305 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 58 points.58
MadridZadar
Score8325
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,508143
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2811
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 42 points.42
MadridZadar
Score7533
Museums within 10 km978
Museums within 2 km of centre598
Share of museums within 2 km %61100
Unesco sites within 50 km42
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 56 points.56
MadridZadar
Score8125
Drinking venues within 4 km2,414194
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498139
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6272
Nightclubs within 4 km3414
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 8 points.8
MadridZadar
Score6355
Protected land share 50 km %1912
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10047
Park area within 2 km187 hectares30 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 46 points.46
MadridZadar
Score7731
Tourist attractions within 2 km619
Park area within 2 km187 hectares30 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 44 points.44
MadridZadar
Score7531
Notable places within 2 km28823
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Zadar leads by 9 points.9
MadridZadar
Score7180
Price level global60.848.5
Daily budget€122€138
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 3 points.3
MadridZadar
Score7269
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C10.4 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm25 mm to 117 mm
Dry months72
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
Zadar
10
11
15
19
23
28
31
31
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Zadar
14
13
13
14
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Zadar
73
64
59
62
58
49
25
32
82
80
117
99
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zadar
9
10
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
Zadar
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre). Zadar: 1999-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Zadar / Zemunik (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridZadar
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
2 h 5 m
€169-225
SPU · 107 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
1 h 5 m
€294
SPU · 107 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 14 km
2 h 10 m
€186-201
1 stop
SPU · 107 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ZAD · 10 km
MunichMUC
2 h 25 m
€193-236
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
€53-86
MAD · 14 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
ZAD · 10 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
2 h 5 m
€108-177
SPU · 107 km
DublinDUB
2 h 25 m
€111-148
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 20 m
€121-231
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
1 h 40 m
€161-226
1 stop
ZAD · 10 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
SPU · 107 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

MeasureMadridZadar
Official languageSpanishCroatian
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 m5 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsZadar Airport (ZAD)10 km from centre67 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridZadar
City population3,506,73070,779
People per km²5,801
Museums within 10 km881
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km42
Distinct cuisines in the centre10617
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months

Where else could you go?

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