VacationSelector

Madrid or Zurich?

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 good for families and value for money with your weighting.

Zurich
44
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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.

MadridZurich
Beaches & swimming. Madrid and Zurich are level on 0.
MadridZurich
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km423
Coast distance305 km632 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 16 points.16
MadridZurich
Score8367
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,508974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2830
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 19 points.19
MadridZurich
Score7556
Museums within 10 km9776
Museums within 2 km of centre5937
Share of museums within 2 km %6149
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 27 points.27
MadridZurich
Score8154
Drinking venues within 4 km2,414676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6282
Nightclubs within 4 km34174
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 26 points.26
MadridZurich
Score6337
Protected land share 50 km %1916
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km187 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 41 points.41
MadridZurich
Score7736
Tourist attractions within 2 km618
Park area within 2 km187 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 16 points.16
MadridZurich
Score7559
Notable places within 2 km288119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 36 points.36
MadridZurich
Score7135
Price level global60.8110.5
Daily budget€122€248
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 19 points.19
MadridZurich
Score7253
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm60 mm to 128 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
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
Zurich
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 20 m
€56-238
MAD · 14 km
1 h 50 m
€84-103
ZRH · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 9 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 15 m
€40-87
MAD · 14 km
2 h 40 m
€188-233
ZRH · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
1 h 30 m
€70-92
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 20 m
€356-444
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
BogotaBOG
10 h 5 m
€963-1395
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
12 h 40 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 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 2026-10, 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

MeasureMadridZurich
Official languageSpanishFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation663 m408 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridZurich
City population3,506,730452,421
People per km²5,8015,147
Museums within 10 km8863
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre10678

Where else could you go?

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