VacationSelector

Annecy or Biarritz?

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

Your match

Annecy
34
match

Wins on places to eat and good for families with your weighting.

Biarritz
✓ Best match
38
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

The verdict

Choose Annecy if you would rather eat and walk: about twice the restaurant choice near the centre, more to occupy children, and much more protected land around the town, though January highs sit at 5°C.

Choose Biarritz if the trip is built around swimming: 43 beaches nearby and a sea reaching 22°C in August, with winters mild enough to visit off-season.

Scoreboard

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

AnnecyBiarritz
Beaches & swimming. Biarritz leads by 67 points.67
AnnecyBiarritz
Score067
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km943
Coast distance260 km1 km
Water distance—1 km
Places to eat. Annecy leads by 14 points.14
AnnecyBiarritz
Score4632
Restaurants within 2 km of centre343207
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2013
Museums & heritage. Biarritz leads by 1 points.1
AnnecyBiarritz
Score3031
Museums within 10 km916
Museums within 2 km of centre55
Share of museums within 2 km %5631
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Annecy leads by 5 points.5
AnnecyBiarritz
Score2015
Drinking venues within 4 km140105
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre12082
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8678
Nightclubs within 4 km66
Nature & day trips. Annecy leads by 6 points.6
AnnecyBiarritz
Score3630
Protected land share 50 km %206
Landscape blanket share 50 km %190
Land share of disc %10064
Park area within 2 km48 hectares32 hectares
Good for families. Annecy leads by 8 points.8
AnnecyBiarritz
Score2921
Tourist attractions within 2 km42
Park area within 2 km48 hectares32 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Annecy and Biarritz are level on 23.
AnnecyBiarritz
Score2323
Notable places within 2 km1515
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Annecy and Biarritz are level on 62.
AnnecyBiarritz
Score6262
Price level global73.773.7
Daily budget€160€160
Year-round weather. Biarritz leads by 6 points.6
AnnecyBiarritz
Score5965
Monthly daytime high5.1 °C to 26.8 °C13.1 °C to 25.8 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 94 mm97 mm to 224 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Annecy is the stronger city for eating out, with about twice as many restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens. It also does more for families: about twice as many attractions near the centre, twice the park space, and 3 theme parks within reach against 1. 20% of the land around it is protected, against 6% around Biarritz.

Biarritz is the one with the coast: 43 beaches nearby against Annecy's 9, and a sea that reaches 22°C in August, where Annecy has no comparable swimming season.

Where they are alike

The two are closest on how their centres are laid out: each has a similar number of notable places within walking distance of the middle, so both are walkable from a single base.

Heritage is a similar proposition in both: each has 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, with Biarritz holding more museums and Annecy's clustered tighter around the centre. Nightlife is modest in both, with comparable numbers of nightclubs and most drinking places close to the centre.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone whose holiday is built around swimming should take Biarritz: 43 beaches nearby and a sea at 22°C in August, against a lake town with no comparable swimming season.

Walkers and day-trippers are better served by Annecy, where 20% of the surrounding land is protected against 6% around Biarritz, and there is roughly twice the park space near the centre.

Families with young children also lean towards Annecy: about twice as many attractions near the centre and 3 theme parks within reach against 1, though Biarritz's milder winter suits an off-season trip.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figures here are identical by construction: they describe a national price level, not either city, so the comparison between these two carries no information. The daily budget of €160 beside it is one national estimate rather than a measurement of Annecy or Biarritz, and neither can be called the cheaper trip.

Biarritz's beach advantage is narrower in time than it looks: the sea reaches 21°C or more only at the height of summer, which is also when its 43 beaches are busiest. Neither city has a month at 40mm of rain or less, so a warm month is not a dry one in either.

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
Annecy
5
7
12
16
20
24
27
26
21
16
9
6
Biarritz
13
14
16
18
21
23
25
26
24
21
16
14
Sea temperature, °C
Annecy
No coastline within reach
Biarritz
13
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Annecy
71
55
61
66
77
81
77
80
87
94
87
88
Biarritz
166
143
127
147
133
106
97
110
146
166
224
179
Daylight, hours per day
Annecy
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Biarritz
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Annecy
2
3
6
6
7
8
9
8
6
4
2
2
Biarritz
3
3
5
5
6
6
7
7
6
4
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Annecy: 1991-2020 normals, Geneve-Cointrin (39 km from centre). Biarritz: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Fuenterrabia (24.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Annecy is at its best from June to August, when highs run 24-27°C and rainfall, at 77-81mm, is no worse than the rest of the year. May and September are still comfortable. Winter is the weak point, with highs of 5-6°C.

Biarritz peaks in July and August, with highs of 25-26°C and the sea at 21-22°C; these are also its driest months, at 97-110mm. September stays warm but wetter at 146mm, and November reaches 224mm. Its winter highs of 13-14°C are far above Annecy's.

Getting there

Flying fromAnnecyBiarritz
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€91-200
GVA · 38 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 3 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€104-203
GVA · 38 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 3 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
€160-186
GVA · 38 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 111 km
MadridMAD
1 h 50 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 23 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 10 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 35 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
MunichMUC
1 h 15 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 111 km
PortoOPO
2 h 10 m
€127-171
1 stop
GVA · 38 km
1 h 15 m
€84-118
BIO · 111 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 5 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 111 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

MeasureAnnecyBiarritz
Official languageFrenchFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation418 m0 m
Main airportGeneva International Airport (GVA)38 km from centre140 non-stop destinationsBiarritz Pays Basque airport (BIQ)3 km from centre24 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAnnecyBiarritz
City population132,11726,206
People per km²1,9752,240
Museums within 10 km18
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre4424
Swim season, months above 21 °C–2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Annecy or Biarritz 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. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.