VacationSelector

Biarritz or Riga?

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 year-round weather with your weighting.

Riga
✓ Best match
53
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.

Scoreboard

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

BiarritzRiga
Beaches & swimming. Biarritz leads by 27 points.27
BiarritzRiga
Score6740
Swim season months20
Beaches 10 km4357
Coast distance1 km12 km
Water distance1 km12 km
Places to eat. Riga leads by 27 points.27
BiarritzRiga
Score3259
Restaurants within 2 km of centre207470
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1333
Museums & heritage. Riga leads by 30 points.30
BiarritzRiga
Score3161
Museums within 10 km1669
Museums within 2 km of centre547
Share of museums within 2 km %3168
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Riga leads by 36 points.36
BiarritzRiga
Score1551
Drinking venues within 4 km105584
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre82456
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7878
Nightclubs within 4 km654
Nature & day trips. Riga leads by 14 points.14
BiarritzRiga
Score3044
Protected land share 50 km %610
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6473
Park area within 2 km32 hectares68 hectares
Good for families. Riga leads by 14 points.14
BiarritzRiga
Score2135
Tourist attractions within 2 km27
Park area within 2 km32 hectares68 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Riga leads by 39 points.39
BiarritzRiga
Score2362
Notable places within 2 km15137
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Riga leads by 14 points.14
BiarritzRiga
Score6276
Price level global73.753.7
Daily budget€160€132
Year-round weather. Biarritz leads by 13 points.13
BiarritzRiga
Score6552
Monthly daytime high13.1 °C to 25.8 °C-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C
Monthly rainfall97 mm to 224 mm33 mm to 87 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
Riga
0
0
4
12
17
21
24
22
17
11
5
1
Sea temperature, °C
Biarritz
13
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Rainfall, mm
Biarritz
166
143
127
147
133
106
97
110
146
166
224
179
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Daylight, hours per day
Biarritz
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Biarritz
3
3
5
5
6
6
7
7
6
4
3
2
Riga
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). Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBiarritzRiga
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 3 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 3 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 111 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 111 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
3 h 15 m
no fares
BIQ · 3 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 23 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
3 h 10 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
6 h 0 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
5 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 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

MeasureBiarritzRiga
Official languageFrenchLatvian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m6 m
Main airportBiarritz Pays Basque airport (BIQ)3 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBiarritzRiga
City population26,206588,911
People per km²2,240
Museums within 10 km812
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre2455
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

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