VacationSelector

Rio de Janeiro or Valletta?

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

Your match

Rio de Janeiro
✓ Best match
69
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Valletta
60
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.

Rio de JaneiroValletta
Beaches & swimming. Rio de Janeiro leads by 23 points.23
Rio de JaneiroValletta
Score10077
Swim season months126
Beaches 10 km6122
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Valletta leads by 4 points.4
Rio de JaneiroValletta
Score5458
Restaurants within 2 km of centre804416
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1635
Museums & heritage. Rio de Janeiro leads by 8 points.8
Rio de JaneiroValletta
Score6961
Museums within 10 km11046
Museums within 2 km of centre5129
Share of museums within 2 km %4663
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Rio de Janeiro leads by 10 points.10
Rio de JaneiroValletta
Score5747
Drinking venues within 4 km818522
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre509250
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6248
Nightclubs within 4 km5027
Nature & day trips. Rio de Janeiro leads by 16 points.16
Rio de JaneiroValletta
Score6246
Protected land share 50 km %21
Landscape blanket share 50 km %170
Land share of disc %576
Park area within 2 km113 hectares24 hectares
Good for families. Rio de Janeiro leads by 13 points.13
Rio de JaneiroValletta
Score5946
Tourist attractions within 2 km3032
Park area within 2 km113 hectares24 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Valletta leads by 5 points.5
Rio de JaneiroValletta
Score5661
Notable places within 2 km98133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rio de Janeiro leads by 12 points.12
Rio de JaneiroValletta
Score8169
Price level global46.162.8
Daily budget€129
Year-round weather. Rio de Janeiro leads by 6 points.6
Rio de JaneiroValletta
Score8579
Monthly daytime high24 °C to 28.4 °C15.7 °C to 31.9 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 232 mm0 mm to 90 mm
Dry months06
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
Rio de Janeiro
28
28
28
27
25
24
24
25
25
26
26
27
Valletta
16
16
17
20
24
29
32
32
29
25
21
17
Sea temperature, °C
Rio de Janeiro
25
25
25
25
24
23
22
21
21
22
23
24
Valletta
16
15
15
16
19
22
25
27
26
24
21
18
Rainfall, mm
Rio de Janeiro
208
151
173
101
71
49
45
42
69
108
220
232
Valletta
80
72
39
19
10
5
0
10
63
74
90
85
Daylight, hours per day
Rio de Janeiro
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Valletta
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Rio de Janeiro
No sunshine record
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. Rio de Janeiro: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km. Valletta: 1991-2020 normals, Luqa (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRio de JaneiroValletta
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 35 m
€996-1109
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
3 h 10 m
€91-131
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
11 h 25 m
€897-908
GIG · 12 km
1 h 30 m
€37-71
MLA · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 30 m
€957-1014
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
2 h 45 m
€99-132
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 55 m
€915-1205
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
9 h 45 m
€609-699
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
9 h 20 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
MadridMAD
10 h 15 m
€910-925
1 stop
GIG · 12 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 40 m
€1,154-1306
GIG · 12 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 55 m
€900-974
1 stop
GIG · 12 km
3 h 0 m
€205-271
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
LisbonLIS
9 h 45 m
€821-922
GIG · 12 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
PortoOPO
10 h 0 m
€827-915
1 stop
GIG · 12 km
3 h 10 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

MeasureRio de JaneiroValletta
Official languagePortugueseEnglish, Maltese
CurrencyBrazilian Real (BRL)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCN60 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-3UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 190, ambulance 192, fire 193112
Elevation31 m56 m
Main airportRio de Janeiro Galeão – Tom Jobim International Airport (GIG)12 km from centre59 non-stop destinationsMalta International Airport (MLA)6 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureRio de JaneiroValletta
City population6,211,2236,444
People per km²4,9308,055
Museums within 10 km7015
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre2755
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months6 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Rio de Janeiro 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). Temperature and rainfall for destinations with no weather station are from the NASA POWER 2001-2020 climatology, derived from MERRA-2. 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). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.