VacationSelector

Malaga or Porto?

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

Your match

Malaga
59
match

Wins on year-round weather and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Porto
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on museums & heritage and 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.

MalagaPorto
Beaches & swimming. Malaga leads by 6 points.6
MalagaPorto
Score6660
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km2152
Coast distance0 km4 km
Water distance0 km3 km
Places to eat. Malaga leads by 1 points.1
MalagaPorto
Score6968
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0021,172
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3427
Museums & heritage. Porto leads by 18 points.18
MalagaPorto
Score5371
Museums within 10 km40101
Museums within 2 km of centre3557
Share of museums within 2 km %8856
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Porto leads by 4 points.4
MalagaPorto
Score5458
Drinking venues within 4 km715900
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre486570
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6863
Nightclubs within 4 km4538
Nature & day trips. Malaga leads by 10 points.10
MalagaPorto
Score4333
Protected land share 50 km %77
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6361
Park area within 2 km85 hectares30 hectares
Good for families. Porto leads by 12 points.12
MalagaPorto
Score5365
Tourist attractions within 2 km33122
Park area within 2 km85 hectares30 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Porto leads by 17 points.17
MalagaPorto
Score3754
Notable places within 2 km3385
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Porto leads by 3 points.3
MalagaPorto
Score7174
Price level global60.855.9
Daily budget€122€109
Year-round weather. Malaga leads by 11 points.11
MalagaPorto
Score8271
Monthly daytime high17.2 °C to 31.5 °C13.8 °C to 25.2 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 88 mm22 mm to 181 mm
Dry months53
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
Porto
14
15
18
18
21
23
25
25
24
20
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Malaga
15
15
15
16
18
20
22
23
22
20
17
16
Porto
14
13
14
14
16
17
17
17
17
17
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Malaga
62
55
66
41
23
4
0
3
25
60
78
88
Porto
151
97
104
99
89
35
22
33
75
158
181
173
Daylight, hours per day
Malaga
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Porto
10
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
Porto
5
5
7
8
9
9
10
9
8
5
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). Porto: 1991-2020 normals, Porto / Serra Do Pilar (2.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMalagaPorto
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 9 km
2 h 10 m
€90-144
1 stop
OPO · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€92
AGP · 9 km
2 h 5 m
€88-127
OPO · 12 km
MadridMAD
1 h 10 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
1 h 10 m
€70-124
OPO · 12 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 35 m
€73-109
AGP · 9 km
1 h 45 m
€81-135
OPO · 12 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 55 m
€146-177
AGP · 9 km
2 h 35 m
€158-202
1 stop
OPO · 12 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 45 m
€110-142
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
2 h 25 m
€90-185
1 stop
OPO · 12 km
GenevaGVA
2 h 15 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
2 h 10 m
€128-166
1 stop
OPO · 12 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€61-88
AGP · 9 km
2 h 25 m
€81-96
OPO · 12 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 25 m
€58-149
AGP · 9 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
OPO · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
OPO · 12 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

MeasureMalagaPorto
Official languageSpanishPortuguese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation18 m104 m
Main airportMálaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP)9 km from centre165 non-stop destinationsFrancisco de Sá Carneiro Airport (OPO)12 km from centre132 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureMalagaPorto
City population599,063231,800
People per km²1,5175,599
Museums within 10 km3242
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre6570
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 Porto 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.