Methodology and data sources
How we score every month for every destination: the climate data we use, the formula, the thresholds and how often it is updated.
This page explains where our numbers come from and how we turn them into a score for every destination and month. The current scoring version is 1.
Data sources
| Data | Source | Updated |
|---|---|---|
| Temperature, rain days, sunshine, humidity | Open-Meteo historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), daily values 2015–2024 averaged per month | Yearly |
| Sea temperature | Open-Meteo Marine API | Yearly |
| Country facts (currency, languages, time zones, driving side) | REST Countries and Wikidata | Quarterly |
| Plugs, voltage, emergency numbers | Compiled once from Wikidata and reviewed | When they change |
| Public holidays | Nager.Date | Yearly |
| Festivals and events | Wikidata for the list; dates from fixed rules or checked against the organisers' official sites | Yearly, and the next 90 days re-checked monthly |
| Photos | Pixabay, Pexels and Wikimedia Commons, credited on each photo | When a page is created |
We use 10 years of climate data (2015–2024), not a single year, so one unusually hot or wet year doesn't decide the answer. These are averages: the weather on your dates can still differ.
How a month is scored
For each place and month we work out a few sub-scores between 0 and 1:
- Temperature comfort — based on the average daily high. It is 1 inside an ideal range and falls to 0 at 10 °C outside it. The ideal range depends on the kind of trip:
- city: 18–26 °C
- beach: 25–32 °C
- nature and hiking: 15–24 °C
- Rain — fewer rain days is better. A rain day has at least 1 mm of rain; 15 or more rain days in a month gives 0.
- Sun — 8 or more hours of sunshine a day gives the full score.
- Sea (beach trips, coastal places only) — 1 at 24 °C or warmer, falling to 0 at 18 °C.
- Heat penalty — minus 0.15 when highs are above 32 °C, and a further minus 0.10 when it is also humid (humidity above 70 % with highs above 28 °C).
These are combined with fixed weights:
| Trip type | Temperature | Rain | Sun | Sea |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| City | 50 % | 30 % | 20 % | — |
| Beach | 30 % | 20 % | 15 % | 35 % |
| Nature | 45 % | 35 % | 20 % | — |
The result is shown out of 10. A place that suits both city and beach trips gets the better of the two.
Countries are scored from their main cities: the average of the cities' scores, with the capital counted twice. A country without city data uses its geographic centre.
Best months and verdicts
| Score | Verdict |
|---|---|
| 7.5 or more | Best |
| 6.0–7.4 | Good |
| 4.0–5.9 | OK |
| below 4.0 | Avoid |
The best months are the months scoring 7.5 or more (up to four, highest first). If no month reaches 7.5, we show the two highest-scoring months.
What the score does not include
The score is about weather. It does not yet include crowds, prices or local events — those are mentioned in the text where relevant. When we change the formula, the version number above changes and every score is recalculated.
When pages are published
A destination page goes live only when it has 12 months of climate data, its text has passed our checks against the data, and it has at least one approved photo. Pages that don't meet this are not shown in search engines.