VacationSelector

Bilbao or Lisbon?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Bilbao
54
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

Lisbon
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on museums & heritage 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.

BilbaoLisbon
Beaches & swimming. Lisbon leads by 26 points.26
BilbaoLisbon
Score3157
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km124
Coast distance0 km2 km
Water distance0 km2 km
Places to eat. Lisbon leads by 18 points.18
BilbaoLisbon
Score6280
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8402,496
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2631
Museums & heritage. Lisbon leads by 32 points.32
BilbaoLisbon
Score3870
Museums within 10 km25124
Museums within 2 km of centre1254
Share of museums within 2 km %4844
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Lisbon leads by 7 points.7
BilbaoLisbon
Score5865
Drinking venues within 4 km8691,225
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730956
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8478
Nightclubs within 4 km5065
Nature & day trips. Lisbon leads by 3 points.3
BilbaoLisbon
Score5356
Protected land share 50 km %1111
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7054
Park area within 2 km119 hectares77 hectares
Good for families. Lisbon leads by 22 points.22
BilbaoLisbon
Score4769
Tourist attractions within 2 km1782
Park area within 2 km119 hectares77 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Lisbon leads by 14 points.14
BilbaoLisbon
Score5266
Notable places within 2 km79169
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lisbon leads by 3 points.3
BilbaoLisbon
Score7174
Price level global60.855.9
Daily budget€122€109
Year-round weather. Lisbon leads by 8 points.8
BilbaoLisbon
Score7078
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C14.9 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm3 mm to 121 mm
Dry months04
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
Lisbon
15
16
19
20
23
26
28
28
26
23
18
15
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Lisbon
15
15
15
15
16
18
18
19
19
18
17
16
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Lisbon
104
73
72
67
53
13
3
7
36
108
121
102
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Lisbon
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
Lisbon
5
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre). Lisbon: 1991-2020 normals, Lisboa / Geof (1.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoLisbon
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 15 m
€64-74
LIS · 7 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
1 h 50 m
€74-97
LIS · 7 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
2 h 30 m
€112-185
LIS · 7 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
2 h 25 m
€118-145
LIS · 7 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
2 h 50 m
€167-189
LIS · 7 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 50 m
€164-250
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
3 h 0 m
€222-263
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
SevillaSVQ
1 h 30 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
LIS · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
7 h 0 m
€621-718
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 35 m
€95-118
LIS · 7 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

MeasureBilbaoLisbon
Official languageSpanishPortuguese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation19 m100 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsLisbon Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS)7 km from centre153 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoLisbon
City population351,124545,796
People per km²8,4405,453
Museums within 10 km1778
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre54106
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 Lisbon 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.