VacationSelector

Bilbao or Bruges?

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 nature & day trips and nightlife with your weighting.

Bruges
44
match

Wins on museums & heritage and good for families 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.

BilbaoBruges
Beaches & swimming. Bilbao leads by 23 points.23
BilbaoBruges
Score318
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km11
Coast distance0 km14 km
Water distance0 km14 km
Places to eat. Bilbao leads by 5 points.5
BilbaoBruges
Score6257
Restaurants within 2 km of centre840443
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2632
Museums & heritage. Bruges leads by 19 points.19
BilbaoBruges
Score3857
Museums within 10 km2530
Museums within 2 km of centre1224
Share of museums within 2 km %4880
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Bilbao leads by 24 points.24
BilbaoBruges
Score5834
Drinking venues within 4 km869292
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730233
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8480
Nightclubs within 4 km508
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 27 points.27
BilbaoBruges
Score5326
Protected land share 50 km %112
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7065
Park area within 2 km119 hectares59 hectares
Good for families. Bruges leads by 13 points.13
BilbaoBruges
Score4760
Tourist attractions within 2 km1752
Park area within 2 km119 hectares59 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Bilbao leads by 12 points.12
BilbaoBruges
Score5240
Notable places within 2 km7940
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 11 points.11
BilbaoBruges
Score7160
Price level global60.876.2
Daily budget€122€180
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 14 points.14
BilbaoBruges
Score7056
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C6.4 °C to 22 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm35 mm to 79 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
Bruges
6
7
10
13
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Bruges
7
6
7
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Bruges
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Bruges
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
Bruges
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
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). Bruges: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (37.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoBruges
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 94 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 94 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
1 h 55 m
€153-230
2 stops
LIL · 72 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 0 m
€138-162
2 stops
BRU · 94 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 10 m
€77-99
BIO · 5 km
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 94 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 5 km
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 94 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 30 m
€129-223
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 94 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 35 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 45 m
€93-156
BRU · 94 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
LIL · 72 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

MeasureBilbaoBruges
Official languageSpanishFrench, German, Dutch
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 m2 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsBrussels Airport (BRU)94 km from centre191 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoBruges
City population351,124118,509
People per km²8,440840
Museums within 10 km1738
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre5451
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 Bruges 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.