VacationSelector

Bilbao or Galway?

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 nightlife and sights concentration with your weighting.

Galway
39
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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.

BilbaoGalway
Beaches & swimming. Galway leads by 20 points.20
BilbaoGalway
Score3151
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km113
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Bilbao leads by 25 points.25
BilbaoGalway
Score6237
Restaurants within 2 km of centre840173
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2620
Museums & heritage. Bilbao leads by 18 points.18
BilbaoGalway
Score3820
Museums within 10 km255
Museums within 2 km of centre125
Share of museums within 2 km %48100
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Bilbao leads by 32 points.32
BilbaoGalway
Score5826
Drinking venues within 4 km869185
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730153
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8483
Nightclubs within 4 km508
Nature & day trips. Galway leads by 2 points.2
BilbaoGalway
Score5355
Protected land share 50 km %11
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7085
Park area within 2 km119 hectares65 hectares
Good for families. Bilbao leads by 22 points.22
BilbaoGalway
Score4725
Tourist attractions within 2 km175
Park area within 2 km119 hectares65 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Bilbao leads by 30 points.30
BilbaoGalway
Score5222
Notable places within 2 km7914
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 14 points.14
BilbaoGalway
Score7157
Price level global60.880.2
Daily budget€122€187
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 16 points.16
BilbaoGalway
Score7054
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C8.9 °C to 19.6 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm63 mm to 113 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
Galway
9
10
11
14
16
19
20
19
18
14
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Galway
9
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
15
14
12
10
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Galway
100
87
76
63
63
72
76
89
77
101
104
113
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Galway
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
Galway
2
2
4
5
6
5
4
5
4
3
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). Galway: 1991-2020 normals, Shannon Airport (64.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoGalway
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
MalagaAGP
1 h 35 m
€77-114
BIO · 5 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
AlicanteALC
1 h 20 m
€81-137
BIO · 5 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
DublinDUB
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
3 h 10 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
ArrecifeACE
2 h 50 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 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

MeasureBilbaoGalway
Official languageSpanishEnglish, Irish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation19 m25 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsShannon Airport (SNN)64 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoGalway
City population351,12483,456
People per km²8,4401,563
Museums within 10 km174
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre5425
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 Galway 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.