VacationSelector

Annecy or Montpellier?

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 museums & heritage with your weighting.

Montpellier
✓ Best match
47
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat 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 want a small city with lake swimming, protected country on the doorstep and evenings that stay quiet, and you can accept a cold winter, with highs of 5-7°C in January and February.

Choose Montpellier if you want warmth, sea swimming and a far wider choice of restaurants, bars and clubs, with more to keep children busy. It is the steadier bet across the whole year.

Scoreboard

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

AnnecyMontpellier
Beaches & swimming. Montpellier leads by 32 points.32
AnnecyMontpellier
Score032
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km98
Coast distance260 km9 km
Water distance—9 km
Places to eat. Montpellier leads by 19 points.19
AnnecyMontpellier
Score4665
Restaurants within 2 km of centre343737
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2034
Museums & heritage. Annecy leads by 4 points.4
AnnecyMontpellier
Score3026
Museums within 10 km914
Museums within 2 km of centre53
Share of museums within 2 km %5621
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Montpellier leads by 18 points.18
AnnecyMontpellier
Score2038
Drinking venues within 4 km140318
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre120265
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8683
Nightclubs within 4 km625
Nature & day trips. Montpellier leads by 7 points.7
AnnecyMontpellier
Score3643
Protected land share 50 km %2015
Landscape blanket share 50 km %1910
Land share of disc %10070
Park area within 2 km48 hectares55 hectares
Good for families. Montpellier leads by 15 points.15
AnnecyMontpellier
Score2944
Tourist attractions within 2 km48
Park area within 2 km48 hectares55 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km37
Sights concentration. Montpellier leads by 15 points.15
AnnecyMontpellier
Score2338
Notable places within 2 km1535
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Annecy and Montpellier are level on 62.
AnnecyMontpellier
Score6262
Price level global73.773.7
Daily budget€160€160
Year-round weather. Montpellier leads by 15 points.15
AnnecyMontpellier
Score5974
Monthly daytime high5.1 °C to 26.8 °C12 °C to 29.6 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 94 mm17 mm to 93 mm
Dry months05
0255075100

Where they differ

Annecy's 9 beaches are on the lake rather than the sea, and 20% of the land around it is protected against 15% around Montpellier. It is the quieter city for eating and drinking, with fewer restaurants near the centre and far fewer bars.

Montpellier has roughly twice as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens, about twice as many places to drink and many times as many nightclubs, most of them central. Its 8 beaches come with sea at 21°C or more in July and August.

Where they are alike

Neither is a heavyweight for museums. Both have 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and in both the collections sit close to the centre, Annecy's more tightly so. A day or two covers the indoor sightseeing in either.

Green space is the other overlap. They put a similar amount of park near the centre, and both have protected country within day-trip range, 20% of the land around Annecy and 15% around Montpellier.

Which traveller are you?

Walkers and swimmers who prefer fresh water should take Annecy. Its 9 beaches are lakeside, 20% of the surrounding land is protected, and the evenings stay quiet, which suits early starts more than late nights.

Anyone travelling mainly to eat and go out should take Montpellier: roughly twice as many restaurants near the centre, a much wider range of kitchens, twice as many bars and many more clubs, most of them walkable.

Families are better served in Montpellier too, with about twice as many attractions near the centre and 7 theme parks within reach against Annecy's 3. Park space near the centre is much the same in both.

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, and the €160 daily budget beside it is one national estimate rather than a measurement of either city. Nothing here tells you which trip costs less.

Montpellier's beach advantage is narrow in time: the sea only reaches 21°C or more in July and August, the same weeks that draw the most people. Annecy's 9 beaches are lakeside, so no water temperature is recorded for them at all, and its rain falls steadily through summer rather than easing off.

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
Montpellier
12
13
16
19
23
27
30
29
25
21
16
13
Sea temperature, °C
Annecy
No coastline within reach
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Annecy
71
55
61
66
77
81
77
80
87
94
87
88
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
Daylight, hours per day
Annecy
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Montpellier
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
Montpellier
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
10
8
6
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Annecy: 1991-2020 normals, Geneve-Cointrin (39 km from centre). Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Annecy is at its best from June to August, with highs of 24-27°C. Rain does not spare summer, at 77-81mm a month, and autumn is wetter still, peaking near 94mm in October. Winter is cold, with highs of 5-7°C.

Montpellier holds up over more of the year. July is both the warmest and the driest month, at 30°C and 17mm. The sea reaches 21-22°C in July and August. September and October turn wet, at 88-93mm. Even January sits near 12°C.

Getting there

Flying fromAnnecyMontpellier
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€104-203
GVA · 38 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€91-200
GVA · 38 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 25 m
€156-181
1 stop
GVA · 38 km
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 109 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MadridMAD
1 h 50 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
BastiaBIA
1 h 15 m
no fares
LYS · 83 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 10 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
AjaccioAJA
1 h 15 m
no fares
LYS · 83 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
TunisTUN
2 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 35 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 109 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

MeasureAnnecyMontpellier
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 m7 m
Main airportGeneva International Airport (GVA)38 km from centre140 non-stop destinationsMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAnnecyMontpellier
City population132,117310,240
People per km²1,9755,452
Museums within 10 km114
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre4465
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 Montpellier 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.