Avignon or Toulouse?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on nature & day trips and museums & heritage with your weighting.
Wins on nightlife 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 Avignon if the trip is built around what lies outside the city: protected countryside, UNESCO-listed places within day-trip range and warm, dry early summers.
Choose Toulouse if the evening and the meal carry the trip: far more restaurants and bars, more to occupy children inside the city, and a centre with more to walk between on foot.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Avignon and Toulouse are level on 0.
| Avignon | Toulouse | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 0 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 1 | 1 |
| Coast distance | 55 km | 145 km |
| Water distance | — | — |
Places to eat. Toulouse leads by 26 points.26
| Avignon | Toulouse | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 44 | 70 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 336 | 962 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 18 | 37 |
Museums & heritage. Avignon leads by 4 points.4
| Avignon | Toulouse | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 55 | 51 |
| Museums within 10 km | 17 | 27 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 16 | 18 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 94 | 67 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 6 | 2 |
Nightlife. Toulouse leads by 27 points.27
| Avignon | Toulouse | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 16 | 43 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 115 | 389 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 97 | 343 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 84 | 88 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 4 | 36 |
Nature & day trips. Avignon leads by 23 points.23
| Avignon | Toulouse | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 44 | 21 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 36 | 1 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 31 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 100 |
| Park area within 2 km | 23 hectares | 43 hectares |
Good for families. Toulouse leads by 24 points.24
| Avignon | Toulouse | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 42 | 66 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 15 | 80 |
| Park area within 2 km | 23 hectares | 43 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 4 | 2 |
Sights concentration. Toulouse leads by 11 points.11
| Avignon | Toulouse | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 40 | 51 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 40 | 72 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Avignon and Toulouse are level on 62.
| Avignon | Toulouse | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 62 | 62 |
| Price level global | 73.7 | 73.7 |
| Daily budget | €160 | €160 |
Year-round weather. Toulouse leads by 1 points.1
| Avignon | Toulouse | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 70 | 71 |
| Monthly daytime high | 11.2 °C to 31.2 °C | 9.7 °C to 28.5 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 34 mm to 111 mm | 37 mm to 74 mm |
| Dry months | 2 | 1 |
Where they differ
Avignon is the better base for leaving town. About 36% of the land around it is protected against 1% around Toulouse, and it has 6 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Toulouse's 2, plus more theme parks within range.
Toulouse has about three times as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens, about three times as many places to drink and many more nightclubs, roughly twice as much park space and twice as many notable places within walking distance of the centre.
Where they are alike
Neither is a swimming destination. Each has one beach nearby, and in neither does the sea reach 21°C in any month, so a trip built around water means travelling away from both.
They are also close on climate and on heritage. Both have January as the coolest month, at 10-11°C, and both pass 28°C in high summer. Each offers a couple of days of museums and historic sites, reached differently: more museums in Toulouse, more UNESCO-listed places within reach of Avignon.
Which traveller are you?
Travelling with children: Toulouse. It has far more tourist attractions near the centre and much more park space, so days fill without driving. Avignon counters with 4 theme parks within reach against Toulouse's 2.
Eating and going out: Toulouse again, with about three times as many restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens, three times as many places to drink and far more nightclubs, most of them central.
Walkers and day-trippers: Avignon. About 36% of the surrounding land is protected, and 6 UNESCO-listed places sit within day-trip reach, so a car earns its keep here more than in Toulouse.
What the numbers don't tell you
The value comparison between these two carries no information. It rests on 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. What a small city and a large one actually cost you is not in this data.
Warmth and dryness are not the same thing. Avignon runs hotter in peak summer, up to 31°C, which is demanding for a day spent walking, and its September, still warm, carries 111mm of rain. Its annual sunshine total is high but says nothing about the month you book.
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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Avignon: 1991-2020 normals, Nimes / Courbessac (34 km from centre). Toulouse: 1991-2020 normals, Toulouse / Blagnac (7 km from centre).
Avignon is at its best in late spring and early summer. May and June are warmer and drier there than in Toulouse, at 24-28°C against 21-26°C, and with around 20mm less rain in each month.
Toulouse suits high summer and early autumn better. Daytime highs hold at 28-29°C in July and August, a little below Avignon's, and September stays dry at 46mm against Avignon's 111mm, with Avignon's rain rising further into late autumn.
Getting there
| Flying from | Avignon | Toulouse |
|---|---|---|
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 25 m €110-119 MRS · 65 km | 1 h 25 m €77-94 TLS · 7 km |
| NantesNTE | 1 h 30 m €72-162 MRS · 65 km | 1 h 10 m no fares TLS · 7 km |
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 1 h 45 m no fares FNI · 38 km | 1 h 40 m no fares TLS · 7 km |
| MadridMAD | 1 h 35 m no fares MRS · 65 km | 1 h 20 m €120-143 TLS · 7 km |
| AmsterdamAMS | 1 h 50 m no fares MRS · 65 km | 1 h 50 m no fares TLS · 7 km |
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 2 h 55 m €219-245 1 stop MRS · 65 km | 3 h 20 m €312-356 1 stop TLS · 7 km |
| MunichMUC | 1 h 35 m no fares MRS · 65 km | 1 h 50 m no fares TLS · 7 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 1 h 35 m no fares MRS · 65 km | 1 h 45 m no fares TLS · 7 km |
| AlgiersALG | 1 h 35 m €100-103 MRS · 65 km | 1 h 35 m no fares TLS · 7 km |
| MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX | 7 h 45 m no fares MRS · 65 km | 7 h 25 m no fares TLS · 7 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
| Measure | Avignon | Toulouse |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | French | French |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CE230 V, 50 Hz | CE230 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 112 |
| Elevation | 10 m | 115 m |
| Main airport | Marseille Provence Airport (MRS)65 km from centre125 non-stop destinations | Toulouse-Blagnac Airport (TLS)7 km from centre80 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 11 days | 11 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Avignon | Toulouse |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 92,188 | 514,819 |
| People per km² | 1,420 | 4,352 |
| Museums within 10 km | 11 | 24 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 6 | 2 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 36 | 101 |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Avignon or Toulouse somewhere new.