VacationSelector

Avignon or Cannes?

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

Your match

Avignon
41
match

Wins on museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.

Cannes
✓ Best match
49
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration 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 Avignon if heritage and days out shape the trip: more UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, a far larger share of protected land around it, and more attractions and park space near the centre for children.

Choose Cannes if you want to swim: 68 beaches nearby, sea warm enough for four months of the year, and more of its notable places within walking distance of the centre.

Scoreboard

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

AvignonCannes
Beaches & swimming. Cannes leads by 73 points.73
AvignonCannes
Score073
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km168
Coast distance55 km1 km
Water distance—1 km
Places to eat. Cannes leads by 6 points.6
AvignonCannes
Score4450
Restaurants within 2 km of centre336473
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1819
Museums & heritage. Avignon leads by 19 points.19
AvignonCannes
Score5536
Museums within 10 km1731
Museums within 2 km of centre165
Share of museums within 2 km %9416
Unesco sites within 50 km62
Nightlife. Cannes leads by 12 points.12
AvignonCannes
Score1628
Drinking venues within 4 km115188
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre97164
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8487
Nightclubs within 4 km419
Nature & day trips. Avignon leads by 11 points.11
AvignonCannes
Score4433
Protected land share 50 km %3617
Landscape blanket share 50 km %3116
Land share of disc %10053
Park area within 2 km23 hectares13 hectares
Good for families. Avignon leads by 17 points.17
AvignonCannes
Score4225
Tourist attractions within 2 km157
Park area within 2 km23 hectares13 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km43
Sights concentration. Cannes leads by 16 points.16
AvignonCannes
Score4056
Notable places within 2 km4095
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Avignon and Cannes are level on 62.
AvignonCannes
Score6262
Price level global73.773.7
Daily budget€160€160
Year-round weather. Cannes leads by 4 points.4
AvignonCannes
Score7074
Monthly daytime high11.2 °C to 31.2 °C13.3 °C to 27.9 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 111 mm13 mm to 138 mm
Dry months23
0255075100

Where they differ

Avignon is the stronger base for heritage and for days out with children: 6 UNESCO-listed places sit within day-trip reach against Cannes's 2, its museums cluster tightly around the centre, and 36% of the surrounding land is protected against 17%. Twice as many attractions and twice as much park space sit near its centre.

Cannes is the one for swimming. It has 68 beaches nearby against Avignon's 1, and the sea reaches 25°C in August, while more of its notable places sit within walking distance of the centre.

Where they are alike

Weather is where they sit closest. Both have mild winters, with January highs of 11-13°C, warm summers and well over 2700 hours of sunshine a year, so neither has a season that is unusable.

They are also close on eating and going out. Cannes has somewhat more restaurants near the centre, but the range of kitchens is similar in both, and in each the drinking places are concentrated near the centre rather than spread out.

Which traveller are you?

If swimming is the point of the trip, Cannes: 68 beaches within reach and a sea that reaches 25°C at the end of summer. Avignon has one beach and no warm-sea season at all.

Families with young children are better served in Avignon, which has about twice as many attractions and twice as much park space near the centre, and 4 theme parks within reach against Cannes's 3.

For a short break spent on foot, with evenings out, Cannes packs about twice as many notable places into walking distance of the centre and has roughly twice as many places to drink.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value comparison carries no information here. Both cities take the same national price level, so it is identical by construction and says nothing about which trip costs less. The €160 daily figure beside it is one national estimate rather than a measurement of Avignon or Cannes.

A strong beach showing is also a seasonal one: the sea only passes 21°C in the warmest months, which are exactly the months everyone else arrives. Inland, Avignon's summer highs of 31°C and its wet September, at 111mm, sit inside months that otherwise read as good ones to travel.

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
Avignon
11
13
17
19
24
28
31
31
26
21
15
12
Cannes
13
14
15
17
21
25
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Avignon
No coastline within reach
Cannes
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Avignon
65
40
44
64
58
44
34
47
111
90
97
57
Cannes
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
Daylight, hours per day
Avignon
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Cannes
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Avignon
5
6
8
8
10
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
Cannes
5
6
7
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Avignon: 1991-2020 normals, Nimes / Courbessac (34 km from centre). Cannes: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (18 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Late spring is Avignon's window: highs of 24-28°C in May and June with modest rain. Midsummer is hot, reaching 31°C, and from September the autumn turns wet, above 90mm a month.

Cannes is the July and August choice. Highs sit at 28°C, the sea reaches 24-25°C, and rainfall drops to 13-18mm, the driest stretch either city gets. Its late autumn is the reverse, the wettest period of the year at over 120mm a month, so a beach trip outside summer is a gamble.

Getting there

Flying fromAvignonCannes
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 25 m
€110-119
MRS · 65 km
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 20 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
no fares
FNI · 38 km
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 20 km
NantesNTE
1 h 30 m
€72-162
MRS · 65 km
1 h 35 m
€129-163
NCE · 20 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 50 m
€170-248
NCE · 20 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
NCE · 20 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 25 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 10 m
€69-133
NCE · 20 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 55 m
€219-245
1 stop
MRS · 65 km
2 h 45 m
€202-329
NCE · 20 km
BastiaBIA
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
55 m
no fares
NCE · 20 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
7 h 55 m
no fares
NCE · 20 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 146 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

MeasureAvignonCannes
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
Elevation10 m0 m
Main airportMarseille Provence Airport (MRS)65 km from centre125 non-stop destinationsNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)20 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAvignonCannes
City population92,18874,350
People per km²1,4203,793
Museums within 10 km1116
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km62
Distinct cuisines in the centre3638
Swim season, months above 21 °C–4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Avignon or Cannes 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.