VacationSelector

Valencia or Alicante?

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

Your match

Valencia
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on sights concentration and nightlife with your weighting.

Alicante
56
match

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

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Alicante if the trip is mostly about swimming and sun. The sea sits 1km from the centre, there are far more beaches to choose between, and more of the year stays dry.

Choose Valencia if you want a city you can walk. Many more notable places sit within walking distance of the centre, with more museums, more restaurants and a wider choice of bars and clubs.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

ValenciaAlicante
Beaches & swimming. Alicante leads by 10 points.10
ValenciaAlicante
Score6777
Swim season months55
Beaches 10 km1233
Coast distance3 km1 km
Water distance3 km1 km
Places to eat. Valencia leads by 12 points.12
ValenciaAlicante
Score7866
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,995867
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3331
Museums & heritage. Valencia leads by 13 points.13
ValenciaAlicante
Score5542
Museums within 10 km5914
Museums within 2 km of centre2611
Share of museums within 2 km %4479
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Valencia leads by 19 points.19
ValenciaAlicante
Score7051
Drinking venues within 4 km1,513591
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre957488
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6383
Nightclubs within 4 km10854
Nature & day trips. Valencia leads by 13 points.13
ValenciaAlicante
Score5340
Protected land share 50 km %107
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6459
Park area within 2 km119 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Valencia and Alicante are level on 42.
ValenciaAlicante
Score4242
Tourist attractions within 2 km1213
Park area within 2 km119 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Valencia leads by 26 points.26
ValenciaAlicante
Score5226
Notable places within 2 km7818
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Valencia and Alicante are level on 71.
ValenciaAlicante
Score7171
Price level global60.860.8
Daily budget€122€122
Year-round weather. Alicante leads by 3 points.3
ValenciaAlicante
Score8487
Monthly daytime high16.8 °C to 30.6 °C17 °C to 31.1 °C
Monthly rainfall7 mm to 70 mm3 mm to 52 mm
Dry months811
0255075100

Where they differ

Alicante is the easier beach trip: the sea is 1km from the centre against Valencia's 3km, and there are 33 beaches nearby against 12. It also has more dry months.

Valencia is the stronger city break: many times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, and many times as many museums. It has about twice as many restaurants near the centre, roughly three times as many places to drink and twice as many nightclubs, plus more protected land around it, 10% against 7%.

Where they are alike

Families come out level. Both have much the same number of tourist attractions near the centre; Valencia offers more park space, Alicante has 1 theme park within reach, so the balance depends on what your children want rather than on the city.

The weather is near enough the same: highs of about 17-31°C through the year, a peak sea of 26°C in late summer and 5 months of swimmable sea. The kitchens on offer are similar in range.

Which traveller are you?

Swimmers and beach-first travellers: Alicante. The sea is 1km from the centre, there are 33 beaches to spread across, and the water stays at 21°C or more for 5 months of the year.

Anyone who travels for museums, restaurants and late nights: Valencia. Far more notable places sit within walking distance of the centre, museums run to many multiples of Alicante's, and both bars and clubs are several times more numerous.

Families are the closest call. Attractions near the centre are similar in number; Alicante has 1 theme park within reach, Valencia more park space and more protected land nearby for day trips.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value comparison between these two carries no information: it is a national price level applied to both, identical by construction. The €122 daily figure beside it is one national estimate, not a measurement of either city, so treat it as a rough guide to the country rather than a reason to pick one.

The beach and weather figures point at the same weeks: the hottest, when beaches and centres are fullest, and nothing in the numbers registers crowding. September keeps the sea warm but brings 52mm in Alicante and 70mm in Valencia, so a warm month here is not necessarily a dry one.

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
Valencia
17
17
19
21
24
28
30
31
28
25
20
17
Alicante
17
18
20
22
24
28
30
31
29
25
21
18
Sea temperature, °C
Valencia
14
14
14
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Alicante
15
14
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Valencia
38
30
40
33
36
26
7
15
70
66
52
48
Alicante
21
18
25
34
21
8
3
12
52
32
34
23
Daylight, hours per day
Valencia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Alicante
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Valencia
6
6
7
8
9
9
10
10
8
7
6
5
Alicante
6
6
8
8
10
10
11
10
8
7
6
6

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Valencia: 1991-2020 normals, Valencia (1.6 km from centre). Alicante: 1991-2020 normals, Alicante (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Alicante is at its best in May and June, 24-28°C and dry, with 8mm of rain in June. October still reaches 25°C, with 32mm against Valencia's 66mm, so autumn is where they part.

Valencia is the better bet in high summer, when July is its driest month at 7mm and the sea is at its warmest. September is heavy in both, more so in Valencia, and its winters are wetter too.

Getting there

Flying fromValenciaAlicante
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 15 m
€80-167
VLC · 9 km
2 h 25 m
€46-56
ALC · 10 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 0 m
€32-53
VLC · 9 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€103-131
VLC · 9 km
2 h 5 m
€85-109
ALC · 10 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 15 m
€110-139
VLC · 9 km
2 h 25 m
€102-119
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€155-178
VLC · 9 km
2 h 35 m
€150-169
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
€69-81
VLC · 9 km
1 h 5 m
€72-86
ALC · 10 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 50 m
€51-87
VLC · 9 km
2 h 0 m
€62-83
ALC · 10 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 0 m
€70-117
VLC · 9 km
2 h 0 m
€102-136
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 0 m
€72-115
VLC · 9 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 9 km
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 127 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

MeasureValenciaAlicante
Official languageSpanishSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation15 m3 m
Main airportValencia Airport (VLC)9 km from centre107 non-stop destinationsAlicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ALC)10 km from centre124 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureValenciaAlicante
City population840,792366,221
People per km²6,2421,819
Museums within 10 km468
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre9252
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Valencia or Alicante 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.