VacationSelector

Antwerp or Bilbao?

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

Your match

Antwerp
51
match

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

Bilbao
✓ Best match
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

Scoreboard

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

AntwerpBilbao
Beaches & swimming. Bilbao leads by 31 points.31
AntwerpBilbao
Score031
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km11
Coast distance21 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Antwerp leads by 13 points.13
AntwerpBilbao
Score7562
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,164840
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4226
Museums & heritage. Antwerp leads by 31 points.31
AntwerpBilbao
Score6938
Museums within 10 km4125
Museums within 2 km of centre2712
Share of museums within 2 km %6648
Unesco sites within 50 km91
Nightlife. Antwerp leads by 1 points.1
AntwerpBilbao
Score5958
Drinking venues within 4 km866869
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre657730
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7684
Nightclubs within 4 km7350
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 19 points.19
AntwerpBilbao
Score3453
Protected land share 50 km %711
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8070
Park area within 2 km53 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Bilbao leads by 1 points.1
AntwerpBilbao
Score4647
Tourist attractions within 2 km1417
Park area within 2 km53 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km30
Sights concentration. Antwerp leads by 2 points.2
AntwerpBilbao
Score5452
Notable places within 2 km8879
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 11 points.11
AntwerpBilbao
Score6071
Price level global76.260.8
Daily budget€180€122
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 12 points.12
AntwerpBilbao
Score5870
Monthly daytime high6.5 °C to 23.2 °C13.5 °C to 26.3 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 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
Antwerp
7
8
11
15
19
21
23
23
20
15
10
7
Bilbao
14
14
17
18
21
24
25
26
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Antwerp
No coastline within reach
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Antwerp
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Daylight, hours per day
Antwerp
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
Antwerp
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1
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. Antwerp: 1991-2020 normals, Antwerpen / Deurne (5.2 km from centre). Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAntwerpBilbao
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 36 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 36 km
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 36 km
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
€138-162
2 stops
BRU · 36 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
MunichMUC
1 h 20 m
no fares
BRU · 36 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 45 m
no fares
ANR · 6 km
1 h 35 m
€77-114
BIO · 5 km
SevillaSVQ
2 h 40 m
no fares
CRL · 85 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 36 km
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 5 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 36 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 30 m
no fares
BRU · 36 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

MeasureAntwerpBilbao
Official languageFrench, German, DutchSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation7 m19 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)36 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAntwerpBilbao
City population529,247351,124
People per km²2,5428,440
Museums within 10 km3817
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km91
Distinct cuisines in the centre8054
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month

Where else could you go?

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