VacationSelector

Malaga or Montpellier?

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 museums & heritage with your weighting.

Montpellier
47
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

MalagaMontpellier
Beaches & swimming. Malaga leads by 34 points.34
MalagaMontpellier
Score6632
Swim season months32
Beaches 10 km218
Coast distance0 km9 km
Water distance0 km9 km
Places to eat. Malaga leads by 4 points.4
MalagaMontpellier
Score6965
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,002737
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3434
Museums & heritage. Malaga leads by 27 points.27
MalagaMontpellier
Score5326
Museums within 10 km4014
Museums within 2 km of centre353
Share of museums within 2 km %8821
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Malaga leads by 16 points.16
MalagaMontpellier
Score5438
Drinking venues within 4 km715318
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre486265
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6883
Nightclubs within 4 km4525
Nature & day trips. Malaga and Montpellier are level on 43.
MalagaMontpellier
Score4343
Protected land share 50 km %715
Landscape blanket share 50 km %010
Land share of disc %6370
Park area within 2 km85 hectares55 hectares
Good for families. Malaga leads by 9 points.9
MalagaMontpellier
Score5344
Tourist attractions within 2 km338
Park area within 2 km85 hectares55 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km07
Sights concentration. Montpellier leads by 1 points.1
MalagaMontpellier
Score3738
Notable places within 2 km3335
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Malaga leads by 9 points.9
MalagaMontpellier
Score7162
Price level global60.873.7
Daily budget€122€160
Year-round weather. Malaga leads by 8 points.8
MalagaMontpellier
Score8274
Monthly daytime high17.2 °C to 31.5 °C12 °C to 29.6 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 88 mm17 mm to 93 mm
Dry months55
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
Montpellier
12
13
16
19
23
27
30
29
25
21
16
13
Sea temperature, °C
Malaga
15
15
15
16
18
20
22
23
22
20
17
16
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Malaga
62
55
66
41
23
4
0
3
25
60
78
88
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
Daylight, hours per day
Malaga
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Montpellier
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Malaga
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
5
Montpellier
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
10
8
6
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Malaga: 1991-2020 normals, Malaga / Aeropuerto (8.2 km from centre). Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMalagaMontpellier
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€92
AGP · 9 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 9 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
MadridMAD
1 h 10 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 50 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 55 m
€146-177
AGP · 9 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€124-199
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 45 m
€110-142
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
FNI · 46 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 35 m
€73-109
AGP · 9 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 25 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 25 m
€58-149
AGP · 9 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
MPL · 8 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

MeasureMalagaMontpellier
Official languageSpanishFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation18 m7 m
Main airportMálaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP)9 km from centre165 non-stop destinationsMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMalagaMontpellier
City population599,063310,240
People per km²1,5175,452
Museums within 10 km3214
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre6565
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months2 months

Where else could you go?

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