Monthly weather averages don't tell you much. "October averages 22°C" hides the fact that some Octobers are glorious and others are a washout. When you're booking a holiday months in advance, that difference matters — but most travel sites only show you the average.
Country and region-level weather is just as misleading. Weather can genuinely differ from one town to the next — Marbella and Malaga are only 55km apart on the same coastline, but they don't always score the same. If you're heading to a specific beach, ski resort, or town, you want to know what conditions are actually like there — not an average for the wider country.
Before You Book shows you what the weather has actually been like, year by year, for your exact dates and exact destination — so you can make a more informed decision before you commit to a booking.
We use ERA5 reanalysis data — real historical weather measurements, not forecasts or generalised climate averages. For every search, we look at the last 5 years for your exact dates and location, giving you a genuine picture of what conditions have actually been like, rather than a single smoothed-out number.
Each destination gets an overall verdict — Excellent, Good, Mixed, or Poor — calculated differently depending on what actually matters for that kind of trip: sea temperature and sunshine for beach holidays, snow days and reliability for skiing, comfortable temperatures for sightseeing and hiking.
Before You Book started as a way to answer a simple question before booking a holiday: is this actually going to be good weather for what we want to do? We couldn't find a tool that showed real historical data in a clear, comparable way — so we built one.
Before You Book is free to use, with no sign-up required. We may earn a small commission if you book through some of the links on this site — this doesn't cost you anything extra, and it doesn't influence which destinations we show you or how they're scored.