VacationSelector

Malaga or Vancouver?

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, 2 points apart

Malaga
59
match

Wins on year-round weather and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Vancouver
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

MalagaVancouver
Beaches & swimming. Malaga leads by 6 points.6
MalagaVancouver
Score6660
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km21109
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Vancouver leads by 5 points.5
MalagaVancouver
Score6974
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0021,330
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3435
Museums & heritage. Malaga leads by 19 points.19
MalagaVancouver
Score5334
Museums within 10 km4027
Museums within 2 km of centre3515
Share of museums within 2 km %8856
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Vancouver leads by 3 points.3
MalagaVancouver
Score5457
Drinking venues within 4 km715848
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre486602
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6871
Nightclubs within 4 km4544
Nature & day trips. Vancouver leads by 34 points.34
MalagaVancouver
Score4377
Protected land share 50 km %719
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6360
Park area within 2 km85 hectares103 hectares
Good for families. Malaga and Vancouver are level on 53.
MalagaVancouver
Score5353
Tourist attractions within 2 km3315
Park area within 2 km85 hectares103 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. Vancouver leads by 11 points.11
MalagaVancouver
Score3748
Notable places within 2 km3363
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Malaga leads by 17 points.17
MalagaVancouver
Score7154
Price level global60.884
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Malaga leads by 29 points.29
MalagaVancouver
Score8253
Monthly daytime high17.2 °C to 31.5 °C7.3 °C to 23 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 88 mm42 mm to 245 mm
Dry months50
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
Vancouver
7
8
11
14
18
20
23
23
19
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Malaga
15
15
15
16
18
20
22
23
22
20
17
16
Vancouver
7
7
8
10
12
14
16
16
14
11
9
8
Rainfall, mm
Malaga
62
55
66
41
23
4
0
3
25
60
78
88
Vancouver
237
121
164
114
73
65
42
49
71
155
245
196
Daylight, hours per day
Malaga
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Vancouver
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Malaga
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
5
Vancouver
2
3
4
6
8
7
10
9
7
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Malaga: 1991-2020 normals, Malaga / Aeropuerto (8.2 km from centre). Vancouver: 1991-2020 normals, Vancouver Harbour CS (4.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMalagaVancouver
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 9 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 55 m
€146-177
AGP · 9 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€92
AGP · 9 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
DublinDUB
2 h 50 m
€122-139
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€124-199
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
10 h 10 m
€743-810
1 stop
YVR · 9 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 25 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
5 h 0 m
€219-262
2 stops
YVR · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
5 h 15 m
€353-356
YVR · 9 km
ZurichZRH
2 h 35 m
€147-204
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
YVR · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 5 m
€185-196
AGP · 9 km
11 h 55 m
no fares
YVR · 9 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

MeasureMalagaVancouver
Official languageSpanishFrench, English
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation18 m2 m
Main airportMálaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP)9 km from centre165 non-stop destinationsVancouver International Airport (YVR)9 km from centre99 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMalagaVancouver
City population599,063662,248
People per km²1,5175,759
Museums within 10 km3226
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre6585
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 Vancouver 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

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.