relocoast
Benidorm levante beach aerial view in alicante spain
Costa Blanca · Marina Baixa, Alicante

Benidorm

4Winter liveability / 5To the sea 200 mTo the airport 50 min · ALCPer m² 3 213 €

Benidorm gets mocked for its towers, but that skyline has a flip side, and it is the reason people move here. The town has more high-rises than any other city in Spain, and more per inhabitant than anywhere in the world. In return it does not close for winter: hotels, doctors, shops and buses run all twelve months. That is true almost nowhere else on this coast, and it is exactly why retired people choose Benidorm. It did not become a resort yesterday either. The harbour was enlarged early in the twentieth century, and in 1925 the first holiday villas went up on Levante beach. In the fifties Madrid started coming here on holiday.

Today it is the leading tourist town of the Valencian Community and third in Spain for hotel beds, after Madrid and Barcelona. In summer there can be four hundred thousand people here against seventy-seven thousand permanent residents. A third of residents are foreign, mostly British and Russian-speaking. There are three beaches, all with blue flags: noisy Levante, over two kilometres long; quiet Poniente; and the small Mal Pas cove below the Balcón del Mediterráneo viewpoint. narrow-gauge tram station for Alicante and Dénia, the airport is fifty minutes away and the hospital 17.

Worth a trip nearby
  • Altea · 11 km — the white old town and the shingle shore
  • Guadalest · 25 km — the castle on the crag above the mountain lake
  • Alicante · 45 km — the airport, the station, a proper city
Resalesource
3 213€/m²
+19.8% price growth yoy
appraised value, Ministerio de Vivienda
New build
4 800€/m²
Rent, 2 bed
1250€/mo
Populationsource
77 211
Foreign residents 34.8%
Winter humidity
67%
Sunshine hours per year
2 850h
Rent, 1 bed
900€/mo
International schools
1
Internet
450Mbps

Benidorm sits in Marina Baixa, Alicante, right on the water. You can live here without a car: our rating is 4 out of 5, rare on the Spanish coast, and the town has its own train station. 34.8% of residents are foreign nationals per the census: Spanish is not the only language you will hear on the street. Summers are packed: tourist load hits 5 out of 5 at the peak against 3 in winter.

Hospital, terrain, getting around

Nearest hospitalsource
17min by car
Hospital Marina Baixa de La Vila Joiosa
la Villajoyosa/Vila Joiosa · 11.5 km · public
Terrainsource
rolling
Centre at 17 m, 43 m of elevation change
25–80 m of change — the climb from the sea to the centre is noticeable on foot
Car-freeour rating
4/5
comfortable without a car
No rail station within 3 km · tram: 2 · bus stops within 1.5 km: 98

Where from: the Ministry of Health hospital catalogue, road time · elevations from the Copernicus terrain model · OpenStreetMap · ratings for car-free and hospital minutes are ours.

Benidorm sea temperature by month

5 months above 20 °Csource
15
J
15
F
15
M
16
A
19
M
23
J
26
J
27
A
26
S
23
O
20
N
17
D

Average sea surface temperature, °C, for 2015–2024 — NOAA OISST satellite series, grid cell 18.5 km from the centre.

Tourist load

3
J
3
F
3
M
3
A
4
M
4
J
5
J
5
A
4
S
4
O
3
N
3
D

Benidorm beaches and water quality

source

Benidorm has 5 beaches tested under EU bathing water rules, at 7 sampling points. In the 2025 season, 4 of 5 were graded excellent. No beach here has been graded “poor” since testing began in 1990.

The grade is bacteria in water samples over the last four seasons — not sand, views or crowds. “Poor” means bathing there is advised against.

BeachFrom the centreGrade 2025“Excellent” in a rowLast “poor”
Playa de Llevant0.6 kmexcellent12 seasonsnone since 1990
Playa del Mal Pas1.1 kmgood—none since 1990
Playa de Ponent1.8 kmexcellent2 seasonsnone since 1990
Playa Cala de la Almadrava2 kmexcellent2 seasonsnone since 2024
Playa Cala del Tio Xixo2.2 kmexcellent2 seasonsnone since 2024

Where from: European Environment Agency, bathing water register, seasons 1990–2025, licence CC BY 4.0. Distance is from the centre in a straight line. Every place in one table

On the map

What tenants actually pay

sourced
Median
550€/mo
75th percentile
671€/mo
Flat size
67m²

This is the median rent on active leases — tax records for 2024, a sample of 6 187 leases. It includes long-standing contracts at unchanged rents, so it sits below what is asked today: our estimate of asking rent is 1 250 € for a two-bedroom.

The point of the 75th percentile: it is closer to what is being signed now than the median. The gap between them shows how much a new tenant overpays relative to long-standing ones.

Where from: SERPAVI, Ministerio de Vivienda · municipality: Benidorm

Rent by number of bedrooms

asking price, estimate
1 bedroom900 €/mo
2 bedrooms1 250 €/mo
3 bedrooms≈ 1 630 €/mo
Median of active leases, 2024550 €/mo

Asking prices are what long lets are advertised at today; the registry is what tenants pay on signed leases, including old ones. The gap between them is your negotiating argument.

Schools nearby

estimate

International schools counted in the base: 1. Names and curricula for this place are not verified yet — the school registry covers the thirty most-requested places so far.

4

Renting without a Spanish contract

How realistic a long lease is without a nómina — on foreign income, savings or prepayment.

  • —34.8% foreign residents — income from abroad is routine for landlords here
  • —A community with its own services: agencies have dealt with foreigners before
  • —Prices rising 19.8% a year — the landlord picks, and the first filter is a nómina

This is our model, not a measurement: demanding a nómina is an individual landlord's practice and nobody publishes it. The rating is derived from the share of foreign residents, the presence of a community with services, price growth, seasonality of the stock and the size of the town.

Who lives here

INE 2025
Foreign residents on the padrón
34.8%
26,862 of 77,211
  • United Kingdom3 065
  • Colombia2 971
  • Romania2 115
  • Pakistan1 919
  • Ukraine1 915
  • Algeria1 657
  • Russia1 262
  • Morocco1 146
Communities and services in their language
  • enEnglish~3 065school, doctors or lawyers in the languageUK citizens in the 2025 census; the largest foreign group
  • ruRussian~1 262school, doctors or lawyers in the languageRussian citizens in the 2025 census, plus 1,915 Ukrainian citizens

Where from: INE, Censo Anual de Población · the register-based census counts padrón registrations by citizenship on 1 January, not everyone living here: seasonal owners and the unregistered are outside it, and naturalised residents count as Spanish.

Winter direct flights from ALC

January 2026/2750 min to the airport
  • United Kingdom21
  • other countries17
  • Germany12
  • Poland10
  • Norway7
  • Italy6
  • Sweden5
  • France5
  • Belgium4
  • Netherlands3
  • Switzerland3
  • Ireland2
  • Denmark2
  • Czechia2
  • Finland1
  • Austria1

Destinations served at least weekly in January; checked 2026-09-17.

Paperwork and practicalities

Appointment for the TIE· Alicantefrom reports
2
You can book in six places: Alicante, Benidorm, Dénia, Elche, Orihuela and Torrevieja. There are more free slots here than in Valencia, 131 counted over summer 2026, yet the wait is four to eight weeks and getting in is very hard. In June 2026 a police union called the six-officer documentation unit in Torrevieja a collapse, and some cases were moved to Elche and Orihuela. Slots appear in the morning and vanish within minutes.
1 — no slots for weeks, 5 — freely available. Checked 2026-09-17
Coworking within 3 km
not on the map
Dog beaches within 8 km
not on the map
Vets within 5 km
6

From OpenStreetMap — an open map filled in by volunteers. Something missing there may still exist: read this as «we found this many», not «there are no more».

Month by month

Air, sea, how busy it gets and what stays open — for each month on its own.

Articles that include this place

Where to look next

Nearby on the same coast
Compare with Calpe / Calp
Cheaper with the same sea
Similar price, other coasts
Compare with Conil de la Frontera
Verified: 2026-09-17 · where the data comes from