VacationSelector

Bilbao or Boston?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Bilbao
54
match

Wins on value for money and year-round weather with your weighting.

Boston
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

BilbaoBoston
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 29 points.29
BilbaoBoston
Score3160
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km168
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Boston leads by 11 points.11
BilbaoBoston
Score6273
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8401,452
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2632
Museums & heritage. Boston leads by 5 points.5
BilbaoBoston
Score3843
Museums within 10 km2579
Museums within 2 km of centre1227
Share of museums within 2 km %4834
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Bilbao and Boston are level on 58.
BilbaoBoston
Score5858
Drinking venues within 4 km869886
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730513
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8458
Nightclubs within 4 km5043
Nature & day trips. Bilbao and Boston are level on 53.
BilbaoBoston
Score5353
Protected land share 50 km %1112
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7077
Park area within 2 km119 hectares116 hectares
Good for families. Boston leads by 6 points.6
BilbaoBoston
Score4753
Tourist attractions within 2 km1728
Park area within 2 km119 hectares116 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Boston leads by 6 points.6
BilbaoBoston
Score5258
Notable places within 2 km79111
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 28 points.28
BilbaoBoston
Score7143
Price level global60.8100
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 14 points.14
BilbaoBoston
Score7056
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C2.9 °C to 28 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm79 mm to 107 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
Bilbao
14
14
17
18
21
24
25
26
25
21
17
14
Boston
3
4
8
14
19
25
28
27
23
17
11
6
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre). Boston: 1991-2020 normals, Boston Logan International (3.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoBoston
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
7 h 5 m
€570
BOS · 4 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
7 h 35 m
€481-586
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
7 h 55 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
DublinDUB
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
6 h 20 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 30 m
€129-223
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
6 h 40 m
no fares
BOS · 4 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

MeasureBilbaoBoston
Official languageSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation19 m43 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoBoston
City population351,124675,647
People per km²8,4402,910
Museums within 10 km1751
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre5474
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 monthNone

Where else could you go?

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