VacationSelector

Bilbao or Gdansk?

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, 2 points apart

Bilbao
54
match

Wins on nightlife and year-round weather with your weighting.

Gdansk
56
match

Wins on good for families and beaches & swimming 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.

BilbaoGdansk
Beaches & swimming. Gdansk leads by 24 points.24
BilbaoGdansk
Score3155
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km120
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Bilbao leads by 10 points.10
BilbaoGdansk
Score6252
Restaurants within 2 km of centre840348
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2628
Museums & heritage. Gdansk leads by 19 points.19
BilbaoGdansk
Score3857
Museums within 10 km2543
Museums within 2 km of centre1228
Share of museums within 2 km %4865
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Bilbao leads by 22 points.22
BilbaoGdansk
Score5836
Drinking venues within 4 km869269
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730203
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8475
Nightclubs within 4 km5030
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 8 points.8
BilbaoGdansk
Score5345
Protected land share 50 km %1112
Landscape blanket share 50 km %03
Land share of disc %7070
Park area within 2 km119 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Gdansk leads by 28 points.28
BilbaoGdansk
Score4775
Tourist attractions within 2 km17108
Park area within 2 km119 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. Bilbao and Gdansk are level on 52.
BilbaoGdansk
Score5252
Notable places within 2 km7976
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Gdansk leads by 8 points.8
BilbaoGdansk
Score7179
Price level global60.849
Daily budget€122€133
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 18 points.18
BilbaoGdansk
Score7052
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C0.7 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm37 mm to 87 mm
Dry months03
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
Gdansk
1
2
6
12
17
20
22
22
18
12
7
3
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Gdansk
4
3
3
5
10
14
18
19
17
13
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Gdansk
47
37
40
37
59
68
87
78
74
71
54
55
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Gdansk
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
Gdansk
1
2
5
7
8
8
8
8
6
4
1
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre). Gdansk: 1991-2020 normals, Gdansk-Rebiechowo (12.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoGdansk
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
MalagaAGP
1 h 35 m
€77-114
BIO · 5 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 45 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
3 h 15 m
no fares
BIQ · 116 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
GDN · 13 km
HurghadaHRG
5 h 5 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
4 h 30 m
no fares
GDN · 13 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

MeasureBilbaoGdansk
Official languageSpanishPolish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Zloty (PLN)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation19 m11 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsGdańsk Lech Wałęsa Airport (GDN)13 km from centre65 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoGdansk
City population351,124487,834
People per km²8,440714
Museums within 10 km1737
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre5448
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 Gdansk 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.