VacationSelector

Bilbao or Izmir?

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 nature & day trips and places to eat with your weighting.

Izmir
53
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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.

BilbaoIzmir
Beaches & swimming. Izmir leads by 24 points.24
BilbaoIzmir
Score3155
Swim season months15
Beaches 10 km14
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Bilbao leads by 13 points.13
BilbaoIzmir
Score6249
Restaurants within 2 km of centre840770
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2612
Museums & heritage. Izmir leads by 5 points.5
BilbaoIzmir
Score3843
Museums within 10 km2547
Museums within 2 km of centre1227
Share of museums within 2 km %4857
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Izmir leads by 4 points.4
BilbaoIzmir
Score5862
Drinking venues within 4 km8691,028
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730695
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8468
Nightclubs within 4 km5070
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 24 points.24
BilbaoIzmir
Score5329
Protected land share 50 km %114
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7084
Park area within 2 km119 hectares62 hectares
Good for families. Bilbao leads by 12 points.12
BilbaoIzmir
Score4735
Tourist attractions within 2 km176
Park area within 2 km119 hectares62 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Bilbao leads by 12 points.12
BilbaoIzmir
Score5240
Notable places within 2 km7939
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Izmir leads by 18 points.18
BilbaoIzmir
Score7189
Price level global60.835.2
Daily budget€122€100
Year-round weather. Izmir leads by 2 points.2
BilbaoIzmir
Score7072
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C13 °C to 33.9 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm1 mm to 127 mm
Dry months05
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
Izmir
13
14
17
21
27
31
34
34
29
24
19
14
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Izmir
16
16
16
17
19
22
23
24
23
21
19
17
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Izmir
119
107
77
51
33
13
1
4
22
55
96
127
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Izmir
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
Izmir
5
5
7
8
10
11
13
12
10
8
6
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). Izmir: 1991-2020 normals, Izmir (3.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoIzmir
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 5 km
1 h 5 m
€46-55
ADB · 13 km
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
3 h 45 m
€119-184
ADB · 13 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
3 h 0 m
€204-238
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
2 h 40 m
€185-288
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
3 h 25 m
€221-272
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 50 m
€157-160
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
ADB · 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 2026-09 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

MeasureBilbaoIzmir
Official languageSpanishTurkish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+3
Emergency number112112
Elevation19 m2 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsAdnan Menderes International Airport (ADB)13 km from centre120 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoIzmir
City population351,1244,493,242
People per km²8,4404,760
Museums within 10 km1729
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre5420
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month5 months

Where else could you go?

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