VacationSelector

Bilbao or Bratislava?

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 nature & day trips with your weighting.

Bratislava
51
match

Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration 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.

BilbaoBratislava
Beaches & swimming. Bilbao leads by 31 points.31
BilbaoBratislava
Score310
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km136
Coast distance0 km10,000 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Bilbao leads by 5 points.5
BilbaoBratislava
Score6257
Restaurants within 2 km of centre840540
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2626
Museums & heritage. Bratislava leads by 23 points.23
BilbaoBratislava
Score3861
Museums within 10 km2553
Museums within 2 km of centre1235
Share of museums within 2 km %4866
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Bilbao leads by 5 points.5
BilbaoBratislava
Score5853
Drinking venues within 4 km869697
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730530
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8476
Nightclubs within 4 km5034
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 14 points.14
BilbaoBratislava
Score5339
Protected land share 50 km %1114
Landscape blanket share 50 km %010
Land share of disc %70100
Park area within 2 km119 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Bratislava leads by 1 points.1
BilbaoBratislava
Score4748
Tourist attractions within 2 km1716
Park area within 2 km119 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Bratislava leads by 11 points.11
BilbaoBratislava
Score5263
Notable places within 2 km79146
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bratislava leads by 5 points.5
BilbaoBratislava
Score7176
Price level global60.854.3
Daily budget€122€132
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 9 points.9
BilbaoBratislava
Score7061
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C2.9 °C to 27.4 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm38 mm to 80 mm
Dry months01
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
Bratislava
3
5
11
17
21
25
27
27
22
15
9
4
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Bratislava
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Bratislava
42
38
52
42
80
70
78
71
64
47
46
46
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Bratislava
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
Bratislava
2
4
5
7
8
8
9
9
6
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre). Bratislava: 1991-2020 normals, Bratislava Ivanka (8.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoBratislava
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
2 h 15 m
€117-169
VIE · 40 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 25 m
€143-152
VIE · 40 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
1 h 55 m
€112-162
VIE · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
1 h 50 m
€180-245
1 stop
VIE · 40 km
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 45 m
€152-183
1 stop
VIE · 40 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 50 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 25 m
€170-237
1 stop
VIE · 40 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
2 h 15 m
€55-96
BTS · 8 km
BerlinBER
2 h 30 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 15 m
€171-190
1 stop
VIE · 40 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
8 h 40 m
€736-786
1 stop
VIE · 40 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
VIE · 40 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

MeasureBilbaoBratislava
Official languageSpanishSlovak
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 m152 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsM. R. Štefánik Airport (BTS)8 km from centre70 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoBratislava
City population351,124480,902
People per km²8,4401,308
Museums within 10 km1722
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre5461
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 Bratislava 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.