VacationSelector

Malaga or Palermo?

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 places to eat and good for families with your weighting.

Palermo
55
match

Wins on sights concentration and beaches & swimming 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.

MalagaPalermo
Beaches & swimming. Palermo leads by 1 points.1
MalagaPalermo
Score6667
Swim season months35
Beaches 10 km2113
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Malaga leads by 19 points.19
MalagaPalermo
Score6950
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,002807
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3413
Museums & heritage. Malaga leads by 3 points.3
MalagaPalermo
Score5350
Museums within 10 km4032
Museums within 2 km of centre3526
Share of museums within 2 km %8881
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Malaga leads by 1 points.1
MalagaPalermo
Score5453
Drinking venues within 4 km715799
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre486515
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6864
Nightclubs within 4 km4516
Nature & day trips. Malaga leads by 7 points.7
MalagaPalermo
Score4336
Protected land share 50 km %74
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6345
Park area within 2 km85 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Malaga leads by 12 points.12
MalagaPalermo
Score5341
Tourist attractions within 2 km3316
Park area within 2 km85 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Palermo leads by 20 points.20
MalagaPalermo
Score3757
Notable places within 2 km33104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Malaga leads by 3 points.3
MalagaPalermo
Score7168
Price level global60.864.9
Daily budget€122€155
Year-round weather. Malaga leads by 5 points.5
MalagaPalermo
Score8277
Monthly daytime high17.2 °C to 31.5 °C12.6 °C to 27.8 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 88 mm4 mm to 71 mm
Dry months57
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
Palermo
13
13
14
16
20
24
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Malaga
15
15
15
16
18
20
22
23
22
20
17
16
Palermo
15
14
15
16
19
22
26
27
25
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Malaga
62
55
66
41
23
4
0
3
25
60
78
88
Palermo
48
45
35
35
18
9
4
11
37
67
71
69
Daylight, hours per day
Malaga
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Palermo
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Malaga
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
5
Palermo
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
8
7
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Malaga: 1991-2020 normals, Malaga / Aeropuerto (8.2 km from centre). Palermo: 1961-1990 normals, Ustica (66.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMalagaPalermo
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€61-88
AGP · 9 km
1 h 45 m
€31-110
PMO · 25 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 30 m
€59-73
AGP · 9 km
1 h 10 m
€40-52
PMO · 25 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 9 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€92
AGP · 9 km
2 h 25 m
€101-135
PMO · 25 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 35 m
€73-109
AGP · 9 km
1 h 50 m
€49-107
PMO · 25 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 45 m
€110-142
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
2 h 30 m
€106-165
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 55 m
€146-177
AGP · 9 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
MadridMAD
1 h 10 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
2 h 25 m
€92-140
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 55 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
3 h 10 m
€151-346
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
PMO · 25 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

MeasureMalagaPalermo
Official languageSpanishItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation18 m14 m
Main airportMálaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP)9 km from centre165 non-stop destinationsFalcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMalagaPalermo
City population599,063630,167
People per km²1,5173,924
Museums within 10 km3242
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre6533
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months5 months

Where else could you go?

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