VacationSelector

Beijing or Bilbao?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Beijing
53
match

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

Bilbao
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and 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.

Scoreboard

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

BeijingBilbao
Beaches & swimming. Bilbao leads by 31 points.31
BeijingBilbao
Score031
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km01
Coast distance145 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Museums & heritage. Beijing leads by 25 points.25
BeijingBilbao
Score6338
Museums within 10 km9525
Museums within 2 km of centre1512
Share of museums within 2 km %1648
Unesco sites within 50 km61
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 18 points.18
BeijingBilbao
Score3553
Protected land share 50 km %311
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10070
Park area within 2 km143 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Beijing leads by 30 points.30
BeijingBilbao
Score7747
Tourist attractions within 2 km4117
Park area within 2 km143 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km120
Sights concentration. Bilbao leads by 2 points.2
BeijingBilbao
Score5052
Notable places within 2 km6979
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Beijing leads by 8 points.8
BeijingBilbao
Score7971
Price level global4960.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 4 points.4
BeijingBilbao
Score6670
Monthly daytime high2.2 °C to 31.8 °C13.5 °C to 26.3 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 163 mm53 mm to 170 mm
Dry months80
0255075100

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
Beijing
2
6
13
21
27
31
32
31
27
19
10
4
Bilbao
14
14
17
18
21
24
25
26
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Beijing
No coastline within reach
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Beijing
3
6
9
23
38
74
163
112
56
27
14
3
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Daylight, hours per day
Beijing
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Beijing
6
6
7
8
9
7
6
7
7
7
6
6
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. Beijing: 1991-2020 normals, Beijing (11.1 km from centre). Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBeijingBilbao
MadridMAD
11 h 30 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
BarcelonaBCN
11 h 0 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 15 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
AmsterdamAMS
9 h 55 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
MunichMUC
9 h 45 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
9 h 50 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
10 h 20 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
9 h 0 m
€475-645
PEK · 25 km
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 5 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
10 h 0 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 50 m
€157-160
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
LisbonLIS
12 h 5 m
no fares
PKX · 45 km
1 h 30 m
€129-223
1 stop
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

MeasureBeijingBilbao
Official languagePutonghuaSpanish
CurrencyYuan Renminbi (CNY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsACI220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, ambulance 120, fire 119112
Elevation43 m19 m
Main airportBeijing Capital International Airport (PEK)25 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year6 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBeijingBilbao
City population21,893,095351,124
People per km²1,3348,440
Museums within 10 km8317
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km61
Distinct cuisines in the centre2954
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month

Where else could you go?

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