VacationSelector

Malaga or Rome?

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

Rome
✓ Best match
72
match

Wins on sights concentration and good for families 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.

MalagaRome
Beaches & swimming. Malaga leads by 33 points.33
MalagaRome
Score6633
Swim season months35
Beaches 10 km213
Coast distance0 km24 km
Water distance0 km24 km
Places to eat. Malaga leads by 9 points.9
MalagaRome
Score6960
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0022,241
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3410
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 31 points.31
MalagaRome
Score5384
Museums within 10 km40161
Museums within 2 km of centre3579
Share of museums within 2 km %8849
Unesco sites within 50 km17
Nightlife. Rome leads by 20 points.20
MalagaRome
Score5474
Drinking venues within 4 km7152,022
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre486912
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6845
Nightclubs within 4 km4585
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 27 points.27
MalagaRome
Score4370
Protected land share 50 km %719
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6378
Park area within 2 km85 hectares172 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 33 points.33
MalagaRome
Score5386
Tourist attractions within 2 km33126
Park area within 2 km85 hectares172 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km04
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 62 points.62
MalagaRome
Score3799
Notable places within 2 km331,125
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Malaga leads by 3 points.3
MalagaRome
Score7168
Price level global60.864.9
Daily budget€122€155
Year-round weather. Malaga leads by 11 points.11
MalagaRome
Score8271
Monthly daytime high17.2 °C to 31.5 °C12 °C to 31.4 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 88 mm21 mm to 114 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
Rome
12
13
16
18
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Malaga
15
15
15
16
18
20
22
23
22
20
17
16
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Malaga
62
55
66
41
23
4
0
3
25
60
78
88
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
Daylight, hours per day
Malaga
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Rome
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
Rome
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
4
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). Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMalagaRome
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 9 km
2 h 20 m
€76-143
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€92
AGP · 9 km
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 35 m
€73-109
AGP · 9 km
1 h 40 m
€44-74
FCO · 23 km
MadridMAD
1 h 10 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
2 h 15 m
€98-119
FCO · 23 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 55 m
€146-177
AGP · 9 km
2 h 10 m
€176-218
FCO · 23 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 45 m
€110-142
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
2 h 5 m
€94-137
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€61-88
AGP · 9 km
1 h 15 m
€84-118
FCO · 23 km
DublinDUB
2 h 50 m
€122-139
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
2 h 55 m
€118-198
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
8 h 45 m
€446-597
FCO · 23 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 25 m
€58-149
AGP · 9 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
CIA · 14 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

MeasureMalagaRome
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 m21 m
Main airportMálaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP)9 km from centre165 non-stop destinationsRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMalagaRome
City population599,0632,748,109
People per km²1,5172,135
Museums within 10 km32177
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km17
Distinct cuisines in the centre6565
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 Rome 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.