VacationSelector

Bath or Paris?

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

Your match

Bath
40
match

Wins on beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Paris
✓ Best match
67
match

Wins on sights concentration 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 Bath if you want a short break where the museums, the restaurants and the bars sit within walking distance of each other, and you would rather have less choice than a transport ride between decisions.

Choose Paris if you want depth: far more places to eat, far more to do after dark, more for children, and warmer summers, with highs near 26°C in August.

Scoreboard

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

BathParis
Beaches & swimming. Bath leads by 8 points.8
BathParis
Score80
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km12
Coast distance29 km149 km
Water distance29 km—
Places to eat. Paris leads by 44 points.44
BathParis
Score4690
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2454,732
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2633
Museums & heritage. Paris leads by 29 points.29
BathParis
Score4776
Museums within 10 km20185
Museums within 2 km of centre1465
Share of museums within 2 km %7035
Unesco sites within 50 km24
Nightlife. Paris leads by 52 points.52
BathParis
Score3688
Drinking venues within 4 km3203,796
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2401,694
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7545
Nightclubs within 4 km11201
Nature & day trips. Paris leads by 4 points.4
BathParis
Score4448
Protected land share 50 km %2828
Landscape blanket share 50 km %2726
Land share of disc %92100
Park area within 2 km45 hectares82 hectares
Good for families. Paris leads by 35 points.35
BathParis
Score4075
Tourist attractions within 2 km1489
Park area within 2 km45 hectares82 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. Paris leads by 62 points.62
BathParis
Score3294
Notable places within 2 km25865
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Paris leads by 8 points.8
BathParis
Score5462
Price level global84.973.7
Daily budget—€160
Year-round weather. Paris leads by 11 points.11
BathParis
Score5566
Monthly daytime high6.8 °C to 21.4 °C7.8 °C to 26 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm38 mm to 75 mm
Dry months01
0255075100

Where they differ

Bath's advantage is compactness. Its museums cluster tightly around the centre, and its drinking places are nearly all central, where in Paris only about half of them are, so an evening out needs no transport.

Paris wins on choice: many times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, many times as many restaurants and a somewhat wider range of kitchens, and many times as many bars and clubs. It also has 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Bath's 2.

Where they are alike

Nature and day trips separate them least: 28% of the land around each is protected, so both put open country within reach of a day's outing, though Paris has about twice as much park space near its centre.

Neither is a swimming destination: neither sees sea at 21°C or more, and beaches are marginal at both. The weather profile is similar in shape too: both are coldest in January, at 7-8°C, and both peak in summer.

Which traveller are you?

Someone travelling for the table and the night out should go to Paris: many times as many restaurants near the centre, a somewhat wider range of kitchens, and many times as many bars and clubs.

Families are better served in Paris too, with 3 theme parks within reach against Bath's 1, about twice as much park space near the centre, and many more attractions close in.

A weekend traveller who would rather not use transport should pick Bath. Its museums and heritage sit tightly around the centre, and the protected country nearby makes a half-day walk easy to arrange.

What the numbers don't tell you

No daily cost figure exists for Bath in this data, so the two cannot be compared on price at all, and nothing here supports calling either the cheaper trip. The value ranking rests on a separate measure both cities do have, not on what a day costs.

The sunshine figure is missing for Paris, since no nearby station records it, so that side of the weather comparison is unmeasured rather than poor. And Paris peaks in July and August, which is also when a city with many times as many attractions near the centre is at its most crowded.

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
Bath
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
21
18
14
10
7
Paris
8
9
13
17
20
24
26
26
22
17
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Bath
8
7
7
9
12
15
18
18
17
15
12
9
Paris
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Bath
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Paris
45
38
41
45
75
51
58
54
51
55
54
62
Daylight, hours per day
Bath
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Paris
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Bath
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Paris
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bath: 1991-2020 normals, Lyneham (29.2 km from centre). Paris: 1991-2020 normals, Paris-Montsouris (4.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bath's window is June to August, when highs reach 19-21°C and rainfall holds near 56-66mm. October and November are the wettest months, at 83-87mm, so an autumn visit means planning around indoor time.

Paris runs warmer and stays comfortable longer, from June to September at 22-26°C, with August the warmest. Its wet outlier is May at 75mm; winter rain is lighter than Bath's, so a cold-season break there is the drier one.

Getting there

Flying fromBathParis
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 55 m
€85-113
1 stop
BRS · 25 km
1 h 20 m
€61-89
CDG · 22 km
ToulouseTLS
1 h 45 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
1 h 20 m
€84-111
ORY · 14 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
1 h 55 m
€107-141
ORY · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 132 km
7 h 30 m
€579-648
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
1 h 40 m
€110-135
CDG · 22 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 15 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
1 h 10 m
€188-212
CDG · 22 km
NiceNCE
2 h 0 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
1 h 30 m
€86-132
ORY · 14 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 25 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
2 h 20 m
€138-242
ORY · 14 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 20 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
3 h 10 m
€130-199
ORY · 14 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 55 m
no fares
LHR · 132 km
12 h 5 m
€705-999
1 stop
CDG · 22 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 2026-09 to 2026-09, 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

MeasureBathParis
Official languageEnglishFrench
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation132 m27 m
Main airportBristol Airport (BRS)25 km from centre116 non-stop destinationsCharles de Gaulle International Airport (CDG)22 km from centre277 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBathParis
City population94,0922,103,778
People per km²3,24519,960
Museums within 10 km17251
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km24
Distinct cuisines in the centre38169
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone–

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bath or Paris 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). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.

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.