VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Bilbao?

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

Your match

Amsterdam
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on museums & heritage and places to eat with your weighting.

Bilbao
54
match

Wins on value for money and year-round weather with your weighting.

What matters to you?

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

Scoreboard

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

AmsterdamBilbao
Beaches & swimming. Amsterdam leads by 9 points.9
AmsterdamBilbao
Score4031
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km331
Coast distance24 km0 km
Water distance24 km0 km
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 21 points.21
AmsterdamBilbao
Score8362
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,957840
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4426
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 42 points.42
AmsterdamBilbao
Score8038
Museums within 10 km9825
Museums within 2 km of centre6912
Share of museums within 2 km %7048
Unesco sites within 50 km51
Nightlife. Amsterdam leads by 12 points.12
AmsterdamBilbao
Score7058
Drinking venues within 4 km1,543869
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,078730
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7084
Nightclubs within 4 km11450
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 7 points.7
AmsterdamBilbao
Score6053
Protected land share 50 km %2111
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8270
Park area within 2 km49 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Amsterdam leads by 21 points.21
AmsterdamBilbao
Score6847
Tourist attractions within 2 km7417
Park area within 2 km49 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km30
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 16 points.16
AmsterdamBilbao
Score6852
Notable places within 2 km19679
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 13 points.13
AmsterdamBilbao
Score5871
Price level global79.260.8
Daily budget€181€122
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 13 points.13
AmsterdamBilbao
Score5770
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C13.5 °C to 26.3 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm53 mm to 170 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

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
Amsterdam
6
7
11
15
18
21
23
23
20
15
10
7
Bilbao
14
14
17
18
21
24
25
26
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
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. Amsterdam: 1991-2020 normals, De Bilt (35.3 km from centre). Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamBilbao
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 12 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 55 m
€133-166
AMS · 12 km
1 h 35 m
€77-114
BIO · 5 km
MunichMUC
1 h 25 m
€203-231
AMS · 12 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 12 km
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 5 m
€152-186
AMS · 12 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 15 m
€166-175
AMS · 12 km
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 5 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 40 m
no fares
AMS · 12 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

MeasureAmsterdamBilbao
Official languageDutchSpanish
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 number112 or 911112
Elevation-2 m19 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamBilbao
City population921,468351,124
People per km²4,2088,440
Museums within 10 km10117
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km51
Distinct cuisines in the centre9854
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Amsterdam 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.