VacationSelector

Montpellier or Santiago de Compostela?

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

Your match

Montpellier
✓ Best match
47
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.

Santiago de Compostela
42
match

Wins on museums & heritage and value for money 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.

MontpellierSantiago de Compostela
Beaches & swimming. Montpellier leads by 32 points.32
MontpellierSantiago de Compostela
Score320
Swim season months20
Beaches 10 km80
Coast distance9 km26 km
Water distance9 km26 km
Places to eat. Montpellier leads by 17 points.17
MontpellierSantiago de Compostela
Score6548
Restaurants within 2 km of centre737336
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3423
Museums & heritage. Santiago de Compostela leads by 18 points.18
MontpellierSantiago de Compostela
Score2644
Museums within 10 km1416
Museums within 2 km of centre314
Share of museums within 2 km %2188
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Montpellier leads by 2 points.2
MontpellierSantiago de Compostela
Score3836
Drinking venues within 4 km318306
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre265268
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8388
Nightclubs within 4 km2513
Nature & day trips. Santiago de Compostela leads by 3 points.3
MontpellierSantiago de Compostela
Score4346
Protected land share 50 km %1511
Landscape blanket share 50 km %100
Land share of disc %7092
Park area within 2 km55 hectares109 hectares
Good for families. Montpellier leads by 17 points.17
MontpellierSantiago de Compostela
Score4427
Tourist attractions within 2 km82
Park area within 2 km55 hectares109 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km70
Sights concentration. Santiago de Compostela leads by 4 points.4
MontpellierSantiago de Compostela
Score3842
Notable places within 2 km3544
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Santiago de Compostela leads by 9 points.9
MontpellierSantiago de Compostela
Score6271
Price level global73.760.8
Daily budget€160€122
Year-round weather. Montpellier leads by 12 points.12
MontpellierSantiago de Compostela
Score7462
Monthly daytime high12 °C to 29.6 °C11.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall17 mm to 93 mm41 mm to 223 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
Montpellier
12
13
16
19
23
27
30
29
25
21
16
13
Santiago de Compostela
11
13
15
17
20
23
25
25
23
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
Santiago de Compostela
14
13
13
14
15
16
17
17
17
16
15
14
Rainfall, mm
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
Santiago de Compostela
217
149
153
136
116
61
41
61
91
208
223
222
Daylight, hours per day
Montpellier
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Santiago de Compostela
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Montpellier
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
10
8
6
5
5
Santiago de Compostela
3
4
5
6
7
7
8
8
6
4
3
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre). Santiago de Compostela: 1991-2020 normals, Santiago / Labacolla (8.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMontpellierSantiago de Compostela
MadridMAD
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
1 h 15 m
€86-122
SCQ · 10 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
1 h 40 m
€71-184
SCQ · 10 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
SevillaSVQ
1 h 55 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
3 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 0 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
AlicanteALC
1 h 35 m
€114-174
MRS · 109 km
1 h 40 m
€218-283
1 stop
SCQ · 10 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 40 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 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

MeasureMontpellierSantiago de Compostela
Official languageFrenchSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation7 m260 m
Main airportMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsSantiago-Rosalía de Castro Airport (SCQ)10 km from centre27 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMontpellierSantiago de Compostela
City population310,240100,965
People per km²5,452459
Museums within 10 km146
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre6538
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Montpellier or Santiago de Compostela 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.