VacationSelector

Belfast or Bilbao?

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

Your match

Belfast
48
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families with your weighting.

Bilbao
✓ Best match
54
match

Wins on year-round weather and value for money 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.

BelfastBilbao
Beaches & swimming. Belfast leads by 17 points.17
BelfastBilbao
Score4831
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km101
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Bilbao leads by 6 points.6
BelfastBilbao
Score5662
Restaurants within 2 km of centre432840
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3126
Museums & heritage. Bilbao leads by 9 points.9
BelfastBilbao
Score2938
Museums within 10 km1825
Museums within 2 km of centre612
Share of museums within 2 km %3348
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Bilbao leads by 10 points.10
BelfastBilbao
Score4858
Drinking venues within 4 km550869
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre348730
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6384
Nightclubs within 4 km2950
Nature & day trips. Belfast and Bilbao are level on 53.
BelfastBilbao
Score5353
Protected land share 50 km %1911
Landscape blanket share 50 km %130
Land share of disc %6570
Park area within 2 km68 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Belfast leads by 1 points.1
BelfastBilbao
Score4847
Tourist attractions within 2 km1617
Park area within 2 km68 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Bilbao leads by 10 points.10
BelfastBilbao
Score4252
Notable places within 2 km4379
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 17 points.17
BelfastBilbao
Score5471
Price level global84.960.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 19 points.19
BelfastBilbao
Score5170
Monthly daytime high6.9 °C to 19 °C13.5 °C to 26.3 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 89 mm53 mm to 170 mm
Dry months00
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
Belfast
7
8
10
12
15
18
19
19
17
13
10
7
Bilbao
14
14
17
18
21
24
25
26
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Belfast
9
8
8
8
9
11
12
13
14
14
12
11
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Belfast
74
62
60
56
55
65
74
86
67
89
87
85
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Daylight, hours per day
Belfast
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Belfast
2
2
3
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
2
2
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. Belfast: 1991-2020 normals, Belfast / Aldergrove Airport (19.4 km from centre). Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBelfastBilbao
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 15 m
€72-142
BHD · 4 km
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€66-101
1 stop
DUB · 132 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 35 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
MalagaAGP
3 h 0 m
€135-197
BFS · 20 km
1 h 35 m
€77-114
BIO · 5 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 35 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
1 h 20 m
€81-137
BIO · 5 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 40 m
no fares
BFS · 20 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

MeasureBelfastBilbao
Official languageEnglishSpanish
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation3 m19 m
Main airportGeorge Best Belfast City Airport (BHD)4 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBelfastBilbao
City population345,006351,124
People per km²3,0008,440
Museums within 10 km817
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre4454
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Belfast 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). 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.