VacationSelector

Malaga or Valletta?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Malaga
59
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife with your weighting.

Valletta
60
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.

MalagaValletta
Beaches & swimming. Valletta leads by 11 points.11
MalagaValletta
Score6677
Swim season months36
Beaches 10 km2122
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Malaga leads by 11 points.11
MalagaValletta
Score6958
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,002416
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3435
Museums & heritage. Valletta leads by 8 points.8
MalagaValletta
Score5361
Museums within 10 km4046
Museums within 2 km of centre3529
Share of museums within 2 km %8863
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Malaga leads by 7 points.7
MalagaValletta
Score5447
Drinking venues within 4 km715522
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre486250
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6848
Nightclubs within 4 km4527
Nature & day trips. Valletta leads by 3 points.3
MalagaValletta
Score4346
Protected land share 50 km %7—
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %636
Park area within 2 km85 hectares24 hectares
Good for families. Malaga leads by 7 points.7
MalagaValletta
Score5346
Tourist attractions within 2 km3332
Park area within 2 km85 hectares24 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Valletta leads by 24 points.24
MalagaValletta
Score3761
Notable places within 2 km33133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Malaga leads by 2 points.2
MalagaValletta
Score7169
Price level global60.862.8
Daily budget€122€129
Year-round weather. Malaga leads by 3 points.3
MalagaValletta
Score8279
Monthly daytime high17.2 °C to 31.5 °C15.7 °C to 31.9 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 88 mm0 mm to 90 mm
Dry months56
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
Valletta
16
16
17
20
24
29
32
32
29
25
21
17
Sea temperature, °C
Malaga
15
15
15
16
18
20
22
23
22
20
17
16
Valletta
16
15
15
16
19
22
25
27
26
24
21
18
Rainfall, mm
Malaga
62
55
66
41
23
4
0
3
25
60
78
88
Valletta
80
72
39
19
10
5
0
10
63
74
90
85
Daylight, hours per day
Malaga
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Valletta
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Malaga
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
5
Valletta
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
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). Valletta: 1991-2020 normals, Luqa (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMalagaValletta
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 9 km
3 h 10 m
€91-131
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€92
AGP · 9 km
2 h 45 m
€99-132
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 30 m
€59-73
AGP · 9 km
1 h 30 m
€37-71
MLA · 6 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 35 m
€73-109
AGP · 9 km
2 h 5 m
€56-95
MLA · 6 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 45 m
€110-142
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
2 h 50 m
€83-115
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€61-88
AGP · 9 km
2 h 5 m
€62-92
MLA · 6 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 50 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 55 m
€146-177
AGP · 9 km
3 h 0 m
€205-271
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
MadridMAD
1 h 10 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
9 h 20 m
no fares
MLA · 6 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

MeasureMalagaValletta
Official languageSpanishEnglish, Maltese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation18 m56 m
Main airportMálaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP)9 km from centre165 non-stop destinationsMalta International Airport (MLA)6 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureMalagaValletta
City population599,0636,444
People per km²1,5178,055
Museums within 10 km3215
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre6555
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months6 months

Where else could you go?

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