VacationSelector

Santiago or Valencia?

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

Your match

Santiago
55
match

Wins on value for money and good for families with your weighting.

Valencia
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage 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.

SantiagoValencia
Beaches & swimming. Valencia leads by 67 points.67
SantiagoValencia
Score067
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km012
Coast distance89 km3 km
Water distance3 km
Places to eat. Valencia leads by 6 points.6
SantiagoValencia
Score7278
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,3171,995
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3233
Museums & heritage. Valencia leads by 10 points.10
SantiagoValencia
Score4555
Museums within 10 km8759
Museums within 2 km of centre3026
Share of museums within 2 km %3444
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. Valencia leads by 9 points.9
SantiagoValencia
Score6170
Drinking venues within 4 km9121,513
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre542957
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5963
Nightclubs within 4 km112108
Nature & day trips. Valencia leads by 1 points.1
SantiagoValencia
Score5253
Protected land share 50 km %1710
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10064
Park area within 2 km88 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Santiago leads by 7 points.7
SantiagoValencia
Score4942
Tourist attractions within 2 km1212
Park area within 2 km88 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km30
Sights concentration. Valencia leads by 4 points.4
SantiagoValencia
Score4852
Notable places within 2 km6278
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Santiago leads by 10 points.10
SantiagoValencia
Score8171
Price level global46.260.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Santiago leads by 1 points.1
SantiagoValencia
Score8584
Monthly daytime high14.3 °C to 27.7 °C16.8 °C to 30.6 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 87 mm7 mm to 70 mm
Dry months88
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
Santiago
28
27
26
21
18
15
14
16
19
22
25
27
Valencia
17
17
19
21
24
28
30
31
28
25
20
17
Sea temperature, °C
Santiago
No coastline within reach
Valencia
14
14
14
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Santiago
0
2
5
16
46
87
52
44
27
11
6
3
Valencia
38
30
40
33
36
26
7
15
70
66
52
48
Daylight, hours per day
Santiago
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Valencia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Santiago
11
9
8
6
5
3
4
5
6
8
9
11
Valencia
6
6
7
8
9
9
10
10
8
7
6
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Santiago: 1991-2020 normals, Santiago Q. Normal (3.1 km from centre). Valencia: 1991-2020 normals, Valencia (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSantiagoValencia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
14 h 25 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
2 h 15 m
€80-167
VLC · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
14 h 25 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
1 h 55 m
€103-131
VLC · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
14 h 45 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
2 h 25 m
€155-178
VLC · 9 km
MadridMAD
13 h 15 m
€799-1378
1 stop
SCL · 14 km
1 h 0 m
€69-81
VLC · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
16 h 5 m
€960-1123
SCL · 14 km
3 h 35 m
€167-378
VLC · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
13 h 45 m
€774-838
2 stops
SCL · 14 km
1 h 10 m
€62-93
ALC · 133 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
11 h 0 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 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 2026-09 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

MeasureSantiagoValencia
Official languageSpanishSpanish
CurrencyChilean Peso (CLP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCL220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-4, UTC-3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 133/134, ambulance 131, fire 132112
Elevation575 m15 m
Main airportComodoro Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport (SCL)14 km from centre68 non-stop destinationsValencia Airport (VLC)9 km from centre107 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureSantiagoValencia
City population6,257,516840,792
People per km²7,4686,242
Museums within 10 km5446
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre6492
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Santiago or Valencia 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. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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. 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.