VacationSelector

Barcelona or Bilbao?

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

Your match

Barcelona
✓ Best match
71
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Bilbao
54
match

Wins on 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.

The verdict

Choose Barcelona if you want a city trip built around eating out, museums and going out late, with 20 beaches close to the centre and a sea warm enough to swim in for three months of summer.

Choose Bilbao if you want a smaller city where the sea starts at the centre, where green space and protected land are close at hand, and you accept far more rain.

Scoreboard

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

BarcelonaBilbao
Beaches & swimming. Barcelona leads by 34 points.34
BarcelonaBilbao
Score6531
Swim season months31
Beaches 10 km201
Coast distance2 km0 km
Water distance2 km0 km
Places to eat. Barcelona leads by 28 points.28
BarcelonaBilbao
Score9062
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,786840
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4126
Museums & heritage. Barcelona leads by 30 points.30
BarcelonaBilbao
Score6838
Museums within 10 km10525
Museums within 2 km of centre4912
Share of museums within 2 km %4748
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Barcelona leads by 24 points.24
BarcelonaBilbao
Score8258
Drinking venues within 4 km2,711869
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,641730
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6184
Nightclubs within 4 km24550
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 3 points.3
BarcelonaBilbao
Score5053
Protected land share 50 km %1011
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5170
Park area within 2 km49 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Barcelona leads by 18 points.18
BarcelonaBilbao
Score6547
Tourist attractions within 2 km6017
Park area within 2 km49 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km30
Sights concentration. Barcelona leads by 21 points.21
BarcelonaBilbao
Score7352
Notable places within 2 km25879
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Barcelona and Bilbao are level on 71.
BarcelonaBilbao
Score7171
Price level global60.860.8
Daily budget€122€122
Year-round weather. Barcelona leads by 8 points.8
BarcelonaBilbao
Score7870
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 28.9 °C13.5 °C to 26.3 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 83 mm53 mm to 170 mm
Dry months50
0255075100

Where they differ

Barcelona has many times as many restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens, plus many times as many museums and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Bilbao's 1. The coast is the other gap: 20 beaches nearby, where Bilbao's coast offers barely any, and a longer summer stretch with the sea at 21°C or more.

Bilbao's advantage is outdoors: the sea meets the centre at 0km against Barcelona's 2km, there is about twice as much park space in town, and slightly more surrounding land is protected.

Where they are alike

Nature and day trips is where they sit closest: about a tenth of the land around each city is protected, and both keep countryside within reach of a compact centre without either being a place you'd visit chiefly for the outdoors.

The seasonal shape is shared too. Both are coolest in January, with daytime highs of 14°C, both peak in August, and the sea is at its warmest that same month in each. Winter is mild in each.

Which traveller are you?

If you travel for food and nightlife, Barcelona is the clear pick: many times as many restaurants near the centre, a much wider range of kitchens, and about three times as many places to drink.

Families will find more to fill days in Barcelona, with about three times as many tourist attractions near the centre and 3 theme parks within reach where Bilbao has none, though Bilbao has more park space.

Anyone after a compact base with the sea at 0km from the centre, twice the park space and countryside close by will prefer Bilbao, and should expect to plan around rain.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figures say nothing here. Both cities carry the same national price level, so neither can be called cheaper than the other on this evidence, and the €122 daily budget beside it is one country-wide estimate rather than a measurement of Barcelona or Bilbao. Treat cost as an open question.

Barcelona's beach advantage peaks in exactly the month everyone else uses it: the sea is warmest in August, which is also the hottest month at 29°C. The autumn months that still look warm are among the wettest of its year, so a quiet, warm beach week is a narrower window than the annual figures suggest.

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
Barcelona
14
14
16
19
22
26
28
29
26
22
18
15
Bilbao
14
14
17
18
21
24
25
26
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Barcelona
14
13
13
14
17
21
24
25
24
21
17
15
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Barcelona
41
32
40
47
44
27
27
51
83
82
45
36
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Daylight, hours per day
Barcelona
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Barcelona
5
5
7
8
8
9
10
9
7
6
4
4
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. Barcelona: 1991-2020 normals, Barcelona / Aeropuerto (14.4 km from centre). Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Barcelona holds up from June to August, with highs of 26-29°C, the sea at 21-25°C and as little as 27mm of rain at midsummer. Autumn stays warm but turns wet, above 80mm a month.

Bilbao is worth timing tightly. July and August are both its warmest, at 25-26°C, and its driest, near 53mm, with the sea at 21-22°C. From late autumn through winter it is persistently wet, 131-170mm in the worst months, so a trip outside summer means rain gear.

Getting there

Flying fromBarcelonaBilbao
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
€114-118
BCN · 13 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€37-96
BCN · 13 km
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
PalmaPMI
55 m
€40-57
BCN · 13 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€79-101
BCN · 13 km
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 10 m
€132-158
BCN · 13 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
SevillaSVQ
1 h 35 m
€91-149
1 stop
BCN · 13 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
MalagaAGP
1 h 35 m
€74-142
BCN · 13 km
1 h 35 m
€77-114
BIO · 5 km
MunichMUC
1 h 55 m
€121-137
BCN · 13 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 55 m
€562-701
BCN · 13 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 20 m
no fares
BCN · 13 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

MeasureBarcelonaBilbao
Official languageSpanishSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation9 m19 m
Main airportJosep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN)13 km from centre229 non-stop destinationsBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBarcelonaBilbao
City population1,731,649351,124
People per km²17,0948,440
Museums within 10 km9517
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre12854
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Barcelona 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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. 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.