For magnetic field calculations, cylindrical permanent magnets are often approximated as ideal, azimuthally
symmetric solenoids. Despite the frequent usage of this approximation, research papers demonstrating the
validity and limitations of this approach are scarcely available. In this paper, the experimentally derived magnetic
field of a cylindrical permanent magnet is compared with the semi-analytically calculated magnetic field
of an ideal solenoid. An experimental setup for measuring the magnetic field distribution is demonstrated and
employed for gathering the data. The proposed setup allows to measure the distributions of the axial and radial
components of the magnetic field surrounding the magnet. In addition, we calculated the magnetic field using
the FEM method and compared it with the solution of an ideal solenoid and discussed the obtained deviation.