VacationSelector

Biarritz or Cannes?

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

Your match

Biarritz
38
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

Cannes
✓ Best match
49
match

Wins on sights concentration 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 Biarritz if you want the smaller, greener coastal town, with park space near the centre and a summer that peaks cooler, and if you can accept rain in most months.

Choose Cannes if you want more within walking distance, roughly twice the restaurants, more to do after dark, and a drier, warmer high summer for swimming.

Scoreboard

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

BiarritzCannes
Beaches & swimming. Cannes leads by 6 points.6
BiarritzCannes
Score6773
Swim season months24
Beaches 10 km4368
Coast distance1 km1 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. Cannes leads by 18 points.18
BiarritzCannes
Score3250
Restaurants within 2 km of centre207473
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1319
Museums & heritage. Cannes leads by 5 points.5
BiarritzCannes
Score3136
Museums within 10 km1631
Museums within 2 km of centre55
Share of museums within 2 km %3116
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Cannes leads by 13 points.13
BiarritzCannes
Score1528
Drinking venues within 4 km105188
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre82164
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7887
Nightclubs within 4 km619
Nature & day trips. Cannes leads by 3 points.3
BiarritzCannes
Score3033
Protected land share 50 km %617
Landscape blanket share 50 km %016
Land share of disc %6453
Park area within 2 km32 hectares13 hectares
Good for families. Cannes leads by 4 points.4
BiarritzCannes
Score2125
Tourist attractions within 2 km27
Park area within 2 km32 hectares13 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. Cannes leads by 33 points.33
BiarritzCannes
Score2356
Notable places within 2 km1595
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Biarritz and Cannes are level on 62.
BiarritzCannes
Score6262
Price level global73.773.7
Daily budget€160€160
Year-round weather. Cannes leads by 9 points.9
BiarritzCannes
Score6574
Monthly daytime high13.1 °C to 25.8 °C13.3 °C to 27.9 °C
Monthly rainfall97 mm to 224 mm13 mm to 138 mm
Dry months03
0255075100

Where they differ

Biarritz is the smaller and quieter of the two, with about twice as much park space near the centre; its appeal is open green space beside the water rather than a dense core.

Cannes packs far more into walking distance: many times as many notable places near the centre, about twice as many restaurants and a wider range of kitchens, and about twice as many places to drink with around three times as many nightclubs, most of them close in. It also has more beaches, 68 against Biarritz's 43.

Where they are alike

Nature is a secondary draw for both. Neither is a base for wild country: 17% of the land around Cannes is protected, Biarritz has more park space near the centre, and countryside is a day out rather than the reason to come.

Heritage and family appeal are modest on both sides: each has 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach and few theme parks, 1 near Biarritz and 3 near Cannes. Both put the sea 1km from the centre.

Which traveller are you?

Swimmers and beach-goers: Cannes. It has 68 beaches against Biarritz's 43, and its sea holds 21°C or more for twice as long, so a shoulder-season swim is a realistic plan rather than a gamble.

Eating out and going out: Cannes again, with about twice as many restaurants near the centre, a wider range of kitchens, and clearly more bars and clubs, most of them within walking distance of where you sleep.

Families wanting a calm base: Biarritz, much the smaller town, with roughly double the park space near the centre. Cannes answers with more attractions near its centre and more theme parks within reach.

What the numbers don't tell you

Value for money here is a national price level, identical for both by construction, so that comparison carries no information about which city costs more. The €160 daily budget beside it is one national estimate, not a measurement of Biarritz or Cannes.

Cannes's larger beach count and its near-dry high summer, 13mm at the driest, describe the same weeks when the coast is busiest, and neither says how much of that shore is quiet or free. The weather advantage is summer-weighted as well: both towns bottom out at 13°C in January, and Biarritz's beaches sit under autumn rain of 166mm and more.

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
Biarritz
13
14
16
18
21
23
25
26
24
21
16
14
Cannes
13
14
15
17
21
25
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Biarritz
13
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Cannes
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Biarritz
166
143
127
147
133
106
97
110
146
166
224
179
Cannes
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
Daylight, hours per day
Biarritz
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Cannes
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Biarritz
3
3
5
5
6
6
7
7
6
4
3
2
Cannes
5
6
7
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Biarritz: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Fuenterrabia (24.4 km from centre). Cannes: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (18 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Biarritz peaks in July and August, with highs of 25-26°C and the sea at 21-22°C. Summer rain does not stop, 97-110mm in those two months, and autumn is heavier still at 166-224mm.

Cannes holds a longer usable season, June to September at 25-28°C with the sea at 21-25°C, and high summer is close to dry at 13-18mm. Its wet spell comes later, in autumn, which makes it the safer bet for a fixed summer week booked well ahead.

Getting there

Flying fromBiarritzCannes
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 3 km
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 20 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 3 km
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 20 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 111 km
1 h 50 m
€170-248
NCE · 20 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 111 km
1 h 25 m
€198-243
1 stop
NCE · 20 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
1 h 30 m
€164-246
1 stop
NCE · 20 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 146 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 23 km
1 h 50 m
€137-165
NCE · 20 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 23 km
1 h 15 m
€83-135
NCE · 20 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
NCE · 20 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
8 h 10 m
€666-799
1 stop
NCE · 20 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

MeasureBiarritzCannes
Official languageFrenchFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m0 m
Main airportBiarritz Pays Basque airport (BIQ)3 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)20 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBiarritzCannes
City population26,20674,350
People per km²2,2403,793
Museums within 10 km816
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre2438
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Biarritz or Cannes 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.