VacationSelector

Alicante or Bilbao?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Alicante
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Bilbao
54
match

Wins on sights concentration and nature & day trips with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Alicante if the sea is the point of the trip: 33 beaches nearby, five months warm enough to swim in, and dry, sunny days across most of the year.

Choose Bilbao if you want a compact city where most of what you came for is within walking distance of the centre, with more parkland, more protected countryside within reach, and rain to plan around in most months.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

AlicanteBilbao
Beaches & swimming. Alicante leads by 46 points.46
AlicanteBilbao
Score7731
Swim season months51
Beaches 10 km331
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Alicante leads by 4 points.4
AlicanteBilbao
Score6662
Restaurants within 2 km of centre867840
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3126
Museums & heritage. Alicante leads by 4 points.4
AlicanteBilbao
Score4238
Museums within 10 km1425
Museums within 2 km of centre1112
Share of museums within 2 km %7948
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Bilbao leads by 7 points.7
AlicanteBilbao
Score5158
Drinking venues within 4 km591869
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre488730
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8384
Nightclubs within 4 km5450
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 13 points.13
AlicanteBilbao
Score4053
Protected land share 50 km %711
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5970
Park area within 2 km60 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Bilbao leads by 5 points.5
AlicanteBilbao
Score4247
Tourist attractions within 2 km1317
Park area within 2 km60 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Bilbao leads by 26 points.26
AlicanteBilbao
Score2652
Notable places within 2 km1879
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Alicante and Bilbao are level on 71.
AlicanteBilbao
Score7171
Price level global60.860.8
Daily budget€122€122
Year-round weather. Alicante leads by 17 points.17
AlicanteBilbao
Score8770
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 31.1 °C13.5 °C to 26.3 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 52 mm53 mm to 170 mm
Dry months110
0255075100

Where they differ

Alicante has 33 beaches nearby where Bilbao has just one, and five months of sea warm enough for swimming, while Bilbao's window is far shorter. It runs warmer year-round, with daytime highs of 17-31°C against 14-26°C, and stays dry in most months.

Bilbao fits many times more notable places into walking distance of the centre, so days need less transport and less planning. It also has more protected land around it, 11% against 7%, and about twice as much park space close to the centre.

Where they are alike

Eating out is close to a draw: a similar number of restaurants near the centre in each, with Alicante's range of kitchens somewhat wider.

Museums are modest in both. Bilbao has about twice as many, while Alicante's sit more tightly around the centre and it has 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Bilbao's 1. Both work reasonably with children, and in both the drinking places and clubs cluster near the centre.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone whose holiday is built around swimming should take Alicante: 33 beaches within reach, sea at 26°C in August, and a swimming season several months long rather than a brief one.

A short city break done on foot suits Bilbao, where far more of the notable places sit within walking distance of the centre, and where there are about twice as many museums.

Families divide. Bilbao offers more park space and more attractions near the centre; Alicante counters with a theme park within reach and warm, dry days that make outdoor time straightforward for most of the year.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value comparison between these two carries no information: that figure is a national price level, identical for both by construction. The €122 daily budget quoted alongside it is one national estimate rather than a measurement of either Alicante or Bilbao.

Alicante's beach advantage rests on the months when the coast is hottest and busiest, with highs reaching 31°C. Its dryness is an annual pattern rather than a guarantee: September is its wettest month at 52mm, which can arrive in short heavy spells. Bilbao's low beach count is not about distance, since the sea meets the centre; there is simply very little of it.

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Alicante
17
18
20
22
24
28
30
31
29
25
21
18
Bilbao
14
14
17
18
21
24
25
26
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Alicante
15
14
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Alicante
21
18
25
34
21
8
3
12
52
32
34
23
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Daylight, hours per day
Alicante
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Alicante
6
6
8
8
10
10
11
10
8
7
6
6
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Alicante: 1991-2020 normals, Alicante (2.8 km from centre). Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Alicante is the better bet from May to June, with highs of 24-28°C, the sea at 22°C and rain under 25mm. High summer is hotter and close to dry, and the sea holds 25°C into September, though that is its wettest month at 52mm.

Bilbao is at its best in July and August, its warmest at 25-26°C and its driest, around 53mm. Winter is cool and persistently wet, 14°C by day with 108-170mm a month, so indoor plans matter.

Getting there

Flying fromAlicanteBilbao
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€46-56
ALC · 10 km
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
€62-93
ALC · 10 km
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€72-86
ALC · 10 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 35 m
€150-169
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 0 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 25 m
€102-119
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
1 h 50 m
€157-160
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 40 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€85-109
ALC · 10 km
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
SevillaSVQ
1 h 15 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 50 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureAlicanteBilbao
Official languageSpanishSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation3 m19 m
Main airportAlicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ALC)10 km from centre124 non-stop destinationsBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAlicanteBilbao
City population366,221351,124
People per km²1,8198,440
Museums within 10 km817
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre5254
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Alicante or Bilbao somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.