Let me start saying that I know a \'tax_query\' is faster than \'meta_query\'.

It\'s always recommended to use taxonomies over custom meta when filtering by custom data is required, but here I found myself in this situation.

I\'m creating a Real Estate application where I have this obvious post type \'property\'. Each property is supposed to have X number of rooms and bathrooms.

Then in my app you can filter properties by range... for example: Show all properties that have from 3 to 18 rooms.

The custom field way would be to add a custom field, eg: \'rooms\' and then do my query like:

$args = array(
    \'post_type\'  => \'property\',
    \'meta_query\' => array(
        \'key\'     => \'rooms\',
        \'value\'   => array(3,18),
        \'type\'    => \'numeric\',
        \'compare\' => \'BETWEEN\',
    ),
);
$query = new WP_Query( $args );

The taxonomy way would be for example to create a custom taxonomy called \'property_rooms\', then create the terms like \'1\', \'2\', \'3\', etc.. and do my query by term ID\'s like:

$args = array(
    \'post_type\'  => \'property\',
    \'tax_query\' => array(
        \'taxonomy\' => \'property_rooms\',
        \'terms\'      => array(3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15...etc) // Just pretend these are the corresponding term id\'s
    )
);
$query = new WP_Query( $args );

And here\'s the question: Does tax_query beats meta_query even in situations like this?

It may be relevant to mention that we could be talking about thousands of properties.

Keep in mind sorting by these fields is neither a requirement nor a consideration to trade the speed of the query.