VacationSelector

Bilbao or Bordeaux?

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

Your match

Bilbao
✓ Best match
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife with your weighting.

Bordeaux
49
match

Wins on museums & heritage 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 Bilbao if you want the walkable option: notable places clustered close together in the centre, about twice as much drinking and clubbing, and a single month, August, when the sea reaches 22°C.

Choose Bordeaux if museums and heritage lead the trip: more of them, more UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, warmer summer afternoons and a wider range of kitchens near the centre.

Scoreboard

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

BilbaoBordeaux
Beaches & swimming. Bilbao leads by 31 points.31
BilbaoBordeaux
Score310
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km14
Coast distance0 km18 km
Water distance0 km—
Places to eat. Bordeaux leads by 6 points.6
BilbaoBordeaux
Score6268
Restaurants within 2 km of centre840975
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2632
Museums & heritage. Bordeaux leads by 17 points.17
BilbaoBordeaux
Score3855
Museums within 10 km2535
Museums within 2 km of centre1217
Share of museums within 2 km %4849
Unesco sites within 50 km14
Nightlife. Bilbao leads by 10 points.10
BilbaoBordeaux
Score5848
Drinking venues within 4 km869546
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730427
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8478
Nightclubs within 4 km5032
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 2 points.2
BilbaoBordeaux
Score5351
Protected land share 50 km %1135
Landscape blanket share 50 km %035
Land share of disc %7085
Park area within 2 km119 hectares43 hectares
Good for families. Bilbao leads by 2 points.2
BilbaoBordeaux
Score4745
Tourist attractions within 2 km1721
Park area within 2 km119 hectares43 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Bilbao leads by 7 points.7
BilbaoBordeaux
Score5245
Notable places within 2 km7951
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 9 points.9
BilbaoBordeaux
Score7162
Price level global60.873.7
Daily budget€122€160
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 2 points.2
BilbaoBordeaux
Score7068
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C10.5 °C to 27.6 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm47 mm to 114 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Bilbao concentrates its evenings: about twice as many places to drink and about twice as many nightclubs as Bordeaux, most of them near the centre, and about twice as many notable places within walking distance of it. Its coast gives you a swimmable sea, 22°C in August, which Bordeaux's 4 nearby beaches never match.

Bordeaux answers with heritage: somewhat more museums, and 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Bilbao's 1. It also has somewhat more restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens.

Where they are alike

Year-round weather is where they sit closest. Both follow the same shape of season, warmest in August, and neither has a genuinely dry month: no month in either falls to 40mm of rain or less.

Day trips and family appeal are near-matched, reached differently: 35% of the land around Bordeaux is protected against 11% around Bilbao, while Bilbao has roughly three times the park space near its centre.

Which traveller are you?

If nights out shape your trip, take Bilbao: about twice as many places to drink and twice as many nightclubs as Bordeaux, and nearly all of them close enough to the centre to walk between.

If you travel for museums and old streets, take Bordeaux: more museums, and 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Bilbao's 1, alongside more restaurants near the centre and a wider spread of kitchens.

Families are a closer call. Bordeaux has somewhat more attractions near the centre and a theme park within reach; Bilbao counters with roughly three times the park space and a sea at 22°C in August.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figure, €122 against €160, is a national price level for restaurants and hotels, not a measurement of either city. A heavily visited city can sit far from its own country's average, by more than the gap between these two, so it does not tell you which trip costs more.

Bilbao's swimming edge rests on a single month of sea warm enough to swim in, August, which is also the peak of the summer window both cities share. And neither has a month at 40mm of rain or less, so a warm month is not a dry one.

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
Bilbao
14
14
17
18
21
24
25
26
25
21
17
14
Bordeaux
11
12
16
18
22
25
27
28
24
20
14
11
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Bordeaux
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Bordeaux
87
67
63
76
71
71
47
57
81
83
114
107
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Bordeaux
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
Bordeaux
3
4
6
6
7
8
8
8
7
5
3
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre). Bordeaux: 1991-2020 normals, Bordeaux / Merignac (9.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bilbao is at its best from July to September, when highs sit at 25-26°C, the sea reaches 21-22°C and rainfall falls to its lowest, near 53-54mm. November is the month to avoid, at 170mm.

Bordeaux peaks in the same weeks but hotter, 27-28°C in July and August, with July its driest month at 47mm. Spring is drier there than in Bilbao, which makes it the better shoulder-season choice; December and January are the weakest, with highs of 11°C.

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoBordeaux
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
1 h 15 m
€114-148
BOD · 11 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
1 h 10 m
€77-107
BOD · 11 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
1 h 30 m
€46-73
BOD · 11 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
MalagaAGP
1 h 35 m
€77-114
BIO · 5 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
LyonLYS
1 h 20 m
no fares
BIQ · 116 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
MarseilleMRS
1 h 20 m
no fares
BIQ · 116 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
BOD · 11 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

MeasureBilbaoBordeaux
Official languageSpanishFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation19 m1 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsBordeaux–Mérignac Airport (BOD)11 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoBordeaux
City population351,124267,991
People per km²8,4405,425
Museums within 10 km1718
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km14
Distinct cuisines in the centre5481
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month–

Where else could you go?

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