VacationSelector

Avignon or Nice?

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 good for families and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Nice
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife 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 you want heritage within walking distance and a base for day trips: 6 UNESCO-listed places sit within reach. It is inland, so swimming is not part of the trip.

Choose Nice if you want the sea, with 70 beaches and warm water through high summer, plus about three times as many restaurants near the centre and far more to do after dark.

Scoreboard

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

AvignonNice
Beaches & swimming. Nice leads by 73 points.73
AvignonNice
Score073
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km170
Coast distance55 km1 km
Water distance—1 km
Places to eat. Nice leads by 25 points.25
AvignonNice
Score4469
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3361,231
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1828
Museums & heritage. Avignon leads by 9 points.9
AvignonNice
Score5546
Museums within 10 km1727
Museums within 2 km of centre1614
Share of museums within 2 km %9452
Unesco sites within 50 km62
Nightlife. Nice leads by 28 points.28
AvignonNice
Score1644
Drinking venues within 4 km115428
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre97388
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8491
Nightclubs within 4 km426
Nature & day trips. Nice leads by 13 points.13
AvignonNice
Score4457
Protected land share 50 km %3624
Landscape blanket share 50 km %3120
Land share of disc %10062
Park area within 2 km23 hectares56 hectares
Good for families. Avignon leads by 12 points.12
AvignonNice
Score4230
Tourist attractions within 2 km154
Park area within 2 km23 hectares56 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km43
Sights concentration. Nice leads by 7 points.7
AvignonNice
Score4047
Notable places within 2 km4060
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Avignon and Nice are level on 62.
AvignonNice
Score6262
Price level global73.773.7
Daily budget€160€160
Year-round weather. Nice leads by 4 points.4
AvignonNice
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 has about three times as many tourist attractions near the centre, its museums sit tightly around the old core, and it counts 6 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Nice's 2. More of the land around it is protected, 36% against 24%.

Nice has about three times as many restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens, roughly three times as many places to drink, and far more nightclubs. It has 70 beaches, while Avignon is inland, and the sea passes 21°C for four months.

Where they are alike

Neither is a difficult climate to plan around. Both stay mild in January, with highs of 11°C in Avignon and 13°C in Nice, and both hold a long warm stretch through summer.

Both keep their interest close in: museums and notable places cluster near the centre rather than spread across the map. Each has theme parks within reach, 4 around Avignon and 3 around Nice, though neither is built mainly around children.

Which traveller are you?

If you want to swim, it is Nice without argument: 70 beaches along the shore and water warm enough for four months of high summer, with the wider choice of restaurants for the evenings.

If your interest is heritage and getting out of town, Avignon: 6 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, a tight cluster of museums, and more protected land around the city than Nice has.

If you travel with children, Avignon has about three times as many tourist attractions near the centre and slightly more theme parks within reach; Nice answers with more park space, but neither city is organised around families.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figure is a national price level, identical for both by construction, so the comparison between these two cities carries no information about which costs less. The €160 daily budget beside it is one national estimate rather than a measurement of either place; your own accommodation and season will decide the bill.

Nice's beaches are strongest in July and August, which is also when the coast is most crowded, so space rather than weather is the constraint. Avignon's warm September is also its wettest month, so a shoulder trip there trades crowds for rain.

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
Nice
13
14
15
17
21
25
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Avignon
No coastline within reach
Nice
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
22
20
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Avignon
65
40
44
64
58
44
34
47
111
90
97
57
Nice
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
Nice
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
Nice
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). Nice: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Avignon is at its best in May and June, when highs run 24-28°C and rain is moderate. Midsummer pushes to 31°C, and September, though still warm, brings the year's heaviest rain at 111mm.

Nice is the better pick in July and August, its driest months at 13-18mm, with sea temperatures of 24-25°C. Autumn reverses that: October and November are the wettest of the year, so a late trip is better spent away from the coast.

Getting there

Flying fromAvignonNice
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 25 m
€110-119
MRS · 65 km
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 6 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
no fares
FNI · 38 km
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 6 km
NantesNTE
1 h 30 m
€72-162
MRS · 65 km
1 h 35 m
€129-163
NCE · 6 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 50 m
€170-248
NCE · 6 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
NCE · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 25 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 10 m
€69-133
NCE · 6 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 55 m
€219-245
1 stop
MRS · 65 km
2 h 45 m
€202-329
NCE · 6 km
BastiaBIA
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
55 m
no fares
NCE · 6 km
MadridMAD
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 50 m
€137-165
NCE · 6 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
7 h 55 m
no fares
NCE · 6 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

MeasureAvignonNice
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)6 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAvignonNice
City population92,188357,737
People per km²1,4204,975
Museums within 10 km1116
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km62
Distinct cuisines in the centre3665
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 Nice 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.