How comparisons are sourced
The method behind the card, written down so it can be checked and corrected. Sources were last read on 15 September 2026.
The six facts and where each comes from
Every destination on the card carries six facts, and every fact names the page it was read from and the date. There are 19 destinations in the module today and 13 pairs.
- Entry on a Portuguese or EU passport. The Portuguese foreign ministry's travel-advice page for the country (Portal das Comunidades, Conselhos aos Viajantes). We quote the sentence the summary rests on. For Portugal's own islands, the European Union's page on travel documents for EU nationals.
- Flight from Lisbon. An estimate, and labelled as one: the great-circle distance from Lisbon airport to the destination's hub airport, from the public-domain OurAirports coordinates, at 800 km/h plus 30 minutes, rounded to the quarter hour. It is the nonstop time; many routes connect, and the page says so where it matters.
- Currency. The ISO 4217 list one, published by SIX, by country name.
- Best months. The WMO World Weather Information Service's climatological normals for the hub city, which each national meteorological service supplies. A month counts as comfortable when the mean temperature is between 14 and 27 C and rainfall is under 80 mm. Where the normals carry only maximum and minimum, the mean is their average. A hot-desert or tropical city that fails every month is given its three coolest dry months instead, and the tape marks it.
- Price level. The World Bank's PPP conversion factor for household consumption divided by its official exchange rate, latest year published for each, indexed to Portugal at 100. Bands: under 55 well below Portugal, 55 to 85 below, 85 to 115 about the same, over 115 above. It is a national average; a capital's hotel district can sit well above it.
- Named sights. The first two places, from a short candidate list, that the national tourism board's own page actually names. If the board names none, the destination is not built. Where a national board site is a script shell that names nothing, the official city board is used and credited.
How the rounds are scored
Rounds one to four are decided by rule, printed under each round: fewer entry hoops win (ID card, then visa-free, then a permit or visa on arrival, then an e-visa, then a consular visa); the shorter flight estimate wins; more comfortable months win; the lower price level wins. Equal values are a draw. Round five, the sights, is editorial: we pick, and the paragraph says why. Ties on the card go to round five. A verdict can disagree with the card in tone, never in count; when it does, it says so.
What is generated and what is written
The numbers are never typed by hand. A script reads the committed source files and writes the tape; the same script writes the sentence in each measured round that states the figures. The rest of each round, the verdict and the questions are written by a person, and they do not state a figure the module does not hold. The archive articles kept from the old site are a separate thing: they are published as they were, with their original dates, and are not re-verified.
Byline
Comparisons carry the byline toltips editorial, which means the people who run this site and read the sources. There is no persona behind it, no generated headshot and no invented reviewer. Tours are vetted by the same people, on the ground in Madeira, where they live.
Corrections and ageing
Visa rules change, and the pages we read say so themselves. Each cell carries its read date; the whole module is re-read every quarter, and sooner when a source page changes. If a fact on a page is wrong or out of date, write to the address on the about page with the page and the source; a correction is made on the page and the source date updated. Archive articles get a note at the top rather than a rewrite.
What we do not publish
No pair whose six facts cannot all be read from an official page. No costs scraped from crowd-sourced price sites. No reviews or ratings of operators, hotels or restaurants. No images of real places that were not photographed there. No sponsored comparison: paid content lives under /partner/ rules, is labelled, and never sits on the card.