VacationSelector

Paphos 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

Paphos
✓ Best match
46
match

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

Santiago de Compostela
42
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.

PaphosSantiago de Compostela
Beaches & swimming. Paphos leads by 79 points.79
PaphosSantiago de Compostela
Score790
Swim season months60
Beaches 10 km270
Coast distance1 km26 km
Water distance1 km26 km
Places to eat. Santiago de Compostela leads by 4 points.4
PaphosSantiago de Compostela
Score4448
Restaurants within 2 km of centre251336
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2223
Museums & heritage. Santiago de Compostela leads by 22 points.22
PaphosSantiago de Compostela
Score2244
Museums within 10 km816
Museums within 2 km of centre314
Share of museums within 2 km %3888
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Santiago de Compostela leads by 6 points.6
PaphosSantiago de Compostela
Score3036
Drinking venues within 4 km224306
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre161268
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7288
Nightclubs within 4 km1113
Nature & day trips. Santiago de Compostela leads by 23 points.23
PaphosSantiago de Compostela
Score2346
Protected land share 50 km %211
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %3392
Park area within 2 km27 hectares109 hectares
Good for families. Paphos leads by 15 points.15
PaphosSantiago de Compostela
Score4227
Tourist attractions within 2 km302
Park area within 2 km27 hectares109 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Santiago de Compostela leads by 23 points.23
PaphosSantiago de Compostela
Score1942
Notable places within 2 km1244
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Santiago de Compostela leads by 1 points.1
PaphosSantiago de Compostela
Score7071
Price level global61.460.8
Daily budget€129€122
Year-round weather. Paphos leads by 24 points.24
PaphosSantiago de Compostela
Score8662
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 30.8 °C11.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 98 mm41 mm to 223 mm
Dry months80
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
Paphos
17
17
19
21
25
28
30
31
29
27
23
19
Santiago de Compostela
11
13
15
17
20
23
25
25
23
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Paphos
17
17
17
18
21
24
27
28
27
25
22
19
Santiago de Compostela
14
13
13
14
15
16
17
17
17
16
15
14
Rainfall, mm
Paphos
81
47
29
17
10
2
1
0
5
14
42
98
Santiago de Compostela
217
149
153
136
116
61
41
61
91
208
223
222
Daylight, hours per day
Paphos
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Santiago de Compostela
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Paphos
No sunshine record
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. Paphos: 1991-2020 normals, Paphos Airport (8.4 km from centre). Santiago de Compostela: 1991-2020 normals, Santiago / Labacolla (8.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromPaphosSantiago de Compostela
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
4 h 25 m
€125-167
PFO · 8 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
BarcelonaBCN
4 h 0 m
no fares
LCA · 110 km
1 h 40 m
€71-184
SCQ · 10 km
DublinDUB
5 h 0 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
4 h 5 m
€197-331
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
AmsterdamAMS
4 h 5 m
€253-340
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
3 h 25 m
€125-152
1 stop
PFO · 8 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
GenevaGVA
3 h 45 m
no fares
LCA · 110 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
4 h 5 m
€176-392
2 stops
PFO · 8 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
MemmingenFMM
3 h 25 m
no fares
PFO · 8 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
BaselBSL
3 h 40 m
no fares
LCA · 110 km
2 h 15 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 2026-09 to 2026-09, 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

MeasurePaphosSantiago de Compostela
Official languageTurkish, Greek, Modern GreekSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG240 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation72 m260 m
Main airportPaphos International Airport (PFO)8 km from centre57 non-stop destinationsSantiago-Rosalía de Castro Airport (SCQ)10 km from centre27 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year17 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasurePaphosSantiago de Compostela
City population35,961100,965
People per km²1,987459
Museums within 10 km46
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre3638
Swim season, months above 21 °C6 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Paphos 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.