VacationSelector

Biarritz or Rio de Janeiro?

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.

Rio de Janeiro
✓ Best match
69
match

Wins on nightlife and museums & heritage 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.

BiarritzRio de Janeiro
Beaches & swimming. Rio de Janeiro leads by 33 points.33
BiarritzRio de Janeiro
Score67100
Swim season months212
Beaches 10 km4361
Coast distance1 km1 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. Rio de Janeiro leads by 22 points.22
BiarritzRio de Janeiro
Score3254
Restaurants within 2 km of centre207804
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1316
Museums & heritage. Rio de Janeiro leads by 38 points.38
BiarritzRio de Janeiro
Score3169
Museums within 10 km16110
Museums within 2 km of centre551
Share of museums within 2 km %3146
Unesco sites within 50 km23
Nightlife. Rio de Janeiro leads by 42 points.42
BiarritzRio de Janeiro
Score1557
Drinking venues within 4 km105818
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre82509
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7862
Nightclubs within 4 km650
Nature & day trips. Rio de Janeiro leads by 32 points.32
BiarritzRio de Janeiro
Score3062
Protected land share 50 km %621
Landscape blanket share 50 km %017
Land share of disc %6457
Park area within 2 km32 hectares113 hectares
Good for families. Rio de Janeiro leads by 38 points.38
BiarritzRio de Janeiro
Score2159
Tourist attractions within 2 km230
Park area within 2 km32 hectares113 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Rio de Janeiro leads by 33 points.33
BiarritzRio de Janeiro
Score2356
Notable places within 2 km1598
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rio de Janeiro leads by 19 points.19
BiarritzRio de Janeiro
Score6281
Price level global73.746.1
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Rio de Janeiro leads by 20 points.20
BiarritzRio de Janeiro
Score6585
Monthly daytime high13.1 °C to 25.8 °C24 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall97 mm to 224 mm42 mm to 232 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
Biarritz
13
14
16
18
21
23
25
26
24
21
16
14
Rio de Janeiro
28
28
28
27
25
24
24
25
25
26
26
27
Sea temperature, °C
Biarritz
13
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rio de Janeiro
25
25
25
25
24
23
22
21
21
22
23
24
Rainfall, mm
Biarritz
166
143
127
147
133
106
97
110
146
166
224
179
Rio de Janeiro
208
151
173
101
71
49
45
42
69
108
220
232
Daylight, hours per day
Biarritz
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Rio de Janeiro
13
13
12
12
11
11
11
11
12
13
13
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Biarritz
3
3
5
5
6
6
7
7
6
4
3
2
Rio de Janeiro
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). Rio de Janeiro: 2001-2020 normals, NASA POWER reanalysis grid, no weather station within 90 km.

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBiarritzRio de Janeiro
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 3 km
11 h 30 m
€957-1014
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 111 km
11 h 55 m
€900-974
1 stop
GIG · 12 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
11 h 55 m
€915-1205
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 23 km
10 h 15 m
€910-925
1 stop
GIG · 12 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 3 km
11 h 35 m
€996-1109
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 30 m
€129-223
1 stop
BIO · 111 km
9 h 45 m
€821-922
GIG · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
9 h 45 m
€609-699
2 stops
GIG · 12 km
PortoOPO
1 h 15 m
€84-118
BIO · 111 km
10 h 0 m
€827-915
1 stop
GIG · 12 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 10 m
€77-99
BIO · 111 km
11 h 25 m
€897-908
GIG · 12 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

MeasureBiarritzRio de Janeiro
Official languageFrenchPortuguese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Brazilian Real (BRL)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCN60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-3
Emergency number112Police 190, ambulance 192, fire 193
Elevation0 m31 m
Main airportBiarritz Pays Basque airport (BIQ)3 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsRio de Janeiro Galeão – Tom Jobim International Airport (GIG)12 km from centre59 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBiarritzRio de Janeiro
City population26,2066,211,223
People per km²2,2404,930
Museums within 10 km870
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km23
Distinct cuisines in the centre2427
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Biarritz or Rio de Janeiro 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. Temperature and rainfall for destinations with no weather station are from the NASA POWER 2001-2020 climatology, derived from MERRA-2. 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.