VacationSelector

Malaga or Manchester?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Malaga
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Manchester
47
match

Wins on sights concentration and nightlife 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.

MalagaManchester
Beaches & swimming. Malaga leads by 38 points.38
MalagaManchester
Score6628
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km2110
Coast distance0 km27 km
Water distance0 km27 km
Places to eat. Malaga leads by 1 points.1
MalagaManchester
Score6968
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,002853
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3435
Museums & heritage. Malaga leads by 11 points.11
MalagaManchester
Score5342
Museums within 10 km4023
Museums within 2 km of centre3511
Share of museums within 2 km %8848
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Manchester leads by 8 points.8
MalagaManchester
Score5462
Drinking venues within 4 km7151,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre486792
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6877
Nightclubs within 4 km4582
Nature & day trips. Malaga leads by 7 points.7
MalagaManchester
Score4336
Protected land share 50 km %717
Landscape blanket share 50 km %017
Land share of disc %6399
Park area within 2 km85 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Malaga leads by 21 points.21
MalagaManchester
Score5332
Tourist attractions within 2 km335
Park area within 2 km85 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Manchester leads by 11 points.11
MalagaManchester
Score3748
Notable places within 2 km3361
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Malaga leads by 17 points.17
MalagaManchester
Score7154
Price level global60.884.9
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Malaga leads by 28 points.28
MalagaManchester
Score8254
Monthly daytime high17.2 °C to 31.5 °C7.2 °C to 20.8 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 88 mm51 mm to 95 mm
Dry months50
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
Malaga
17
18
20
22
25
29
31
32
28
24
20
18
Manchester
7
8
10
13
17
19
21
20
18
14
10
8
Sea temperature, °C
Malaga
15
15
15
16
18
20
22
23
22
20
17
16
Manchester
7
6
7
9
11
14
16
17
16
14
11
9
Rainfall, mm
Malaga
62
55
66
41
23
4
0
3
25
60
78
88
Manchester
67
62
51
61
59
63
60
73
71
95
86
84
Daylight, hours per day
Malaga
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Manchester
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Malaga
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
5
Manchester
2
2
3
5
6
6
6
6
4
3
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Malaga: 1991-2020 normals, Malaga / Aeropuerto (8.2 km from centre). Manchester: 1991-2020 normals, Manchester Airport (14.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMalagaManchester
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 9 km
55 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 35 m
€73-109
AGP · 9 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€92
AGP · 9 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
CopenhagenCPH
3 h 35 m
€107-122
AGP · 9 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
MadridMAD
1 h 10 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€61-88
AGP · 9 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
OsloOSL, TRF
4 h 0 m
€151-202
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 55 m
€146-177
AGP · 9 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 30 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
MAN · 15 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 25 m
€58-149
AGP · 9 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
MAN · 15 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

MeasureMalagaManchester
Official languageSpanishEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation18 m38 m
Main airportMálaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP)9 km from centre165 non-stop destinationsManchester Airport (MAN)15 km from centre210 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureMalagaManchester
City population599,063547,627
People per km²1,5174,737
Museums within 10 km3228
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre6563
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Malaga or Manchester 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.