VacationSelector

Biarritz or Portland?

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

Your match

Biarritz
38
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Portland
✓ Best match
42
match

Wins on nightlife 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.

Scoreboard

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

BiarritzPortland
Beaches & swimming. Biarritz leads by 67 points.67
BiarritzPortland
Score670
Swim season months20
Beaches 10 km4327
Coast distance1 km69 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Portland leads by 42 points.42
BiarritzPortland
Score3274
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2071,011
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1344
Museums & heritage. Portland leads by 4 points.4
BiarritzPortland
Score3135
Museums within 10 km1623
Museums within 2 km of centre515
Share of museums within 2 km %3165
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Portland leads by 43 points.43
BiarritzPortland
Score1558
Drinking venues within 4 km105942
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre82518
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7855
Nightclubs within 4 km632
Nature & day trips. Portland leads by 5 points.5
BiarritzPortland
Score3035
Protected land share 50 km %613
Landscape blanket share 50 km %03
Land share of disc %64100
Park area within 2 km32 hectares37 hectares
Good for families. Portland leads by 13 points.13
BiarritzPortland
Score2134
Tourist attractions within 2 km28
Park area within 2 km32 hectares37 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Portland leads by 12 points.12
BiarritzPortland
Score2335
Notable places within 2 km1529
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Biarritz leads by 19 points.19
BiarritzPortland
Score6243
Price level global73.7100
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Biarritz and Portland are level on 65.
BiarritzPortland
Score6565
Monthly daytime high13.1 °C to 25.8 °C7.9 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall97 mm to 224 mm13 mm to 145 mm
Dry months03
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
Biarritz
13
14
16
18
21
23
25
26
24
21
16
14
Portland
8
11
13
16
20
23
27
28
25
18
12
8
Sea temperature, °C
Biarritz
13
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Portland
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Biarritz
166
143
127
147
133
106
97
110
146
166
224
179
Portland
128
94
101
75
65
41
13
14
39
87
138
145
Daylight, hours per day
Biarritz
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Portland
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Biarritz
3
3
5
5
6
6
7
7
6
4
3
2
Portland
No sunshine record

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). Portland: 1991-2020 normals, Portland International Airport (9.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBiarritzPortland
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 111 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
5 h 20 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 3 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
PDX · 10 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 2026-10, 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

MeasureBiarritzPortland
Official languageFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation0 m152 m
Main airportBiarritz Pays Basque airport (BIQ)3 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsPortland International Airport (PDX)10 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBiarritzPortland
City population26,206652,503
People per km²2,2401,736
Museums within 10 km817
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre2482
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Biarritz or Portland 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.