VacationSelector

Malaga or Washington DC?

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 beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on sights concentration and places to eat 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.

MalagaWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Malaga leads by 48 points.48
MalagaWashington DC
Score6618
Swim season months33
Beaches 10 km211
Coast distance0 km34 km
Water distance0 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 8 points.8
MalagaWashington DC
Score6977
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0021,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3436
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 2 points.2
MalagaWashington DC
Score5355
Museums within 10 km4083
Museums within 2 km of centre3555
Share of museums within 2 km %8866
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 7 points.7
MalagaWashington DC
Score5461
Drinking venues within 4 km7151,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre486593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6858
Nightclubs within 4 km4554
Nature & day trips. Malaga leads by 1 points.1
MalagaWashington DC
Score4342
Protected land share 50 km %710
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %6394
Park area within 2 km85 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Malaga leads by 15 points.15
MalagaWashington DC
Score5338
Tourist attractions within 2 km337
Park area within 2 km85 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 39 points.39
MalagaWashington DC
Score3776
Notable places within 2 km33305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Malaga leads by 28 points.28
MalagaWashington DC
Score7143
Price level global60.8100
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Malaga leads by 20 points.20
MalagaWashington DC
Score8262
Monthly daytime high17.2 °C to 31.5 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 88 mm65 mm to 108 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
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Malaga
15
15
15
16
18
20
22
23
22
20
17
16
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Malaga
62
55
66
41
23
4
0
3
25
60
78
88
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Malaga
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Washington DC
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
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Malaga: 1991-2020 normals, Malaga / Aeropuerto (8.2 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMalagaWashington DC
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 9 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 35 m
€73-109
AGP · 9 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 55 m
€146-177
AGP · 9 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€92
AGP · 9 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DublinDUB
2 h 50 m
€122-139
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
7 h 5 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 45 m
€110-142
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
MadridMAD
1 h 10 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
7 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
3 h 35 m
€107-122
AGP · 9 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Abu DhabiAUH
7 h 25 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
14 h 5 m
no fares
IAD · 37 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

MeasureMalagaWashington DC
Official languageSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation18 m72 m
Main airportMálaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP)9 km from centre165 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMalagaWashington DC
City population599,063689,545
People per km²1,5173,896
Museums within 10 km3299
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre6582
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months3 months

Where else could you go?

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