VacationSelector

Bilbao or London?

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

Your match

Bilbao
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

London
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration 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.

BilbaoLondon
Beaches & swimming. Bilbao leads by 31 points.31
BilbaoLondon
Score310
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km147
Coast distance0 km43 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. London leads by 26 points.26
BilbaoLondon
Score6288
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8403,317
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2640
Museums & heritage. London leads by 34 points.34
BilbaoLondon
Score3872
Museums within 10 km25148
Museums within 2 km of centre1249
Share of museums within 2 km %4833
Unesco sites within 50 km14
Nightlife. London leads by 37 points.37
BilbaoLondon
Score5895
Drinking venues within 4 km8695,327
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre7302,443
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8446
Nightclubs within 4 km50312
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 13 points.13
BilbaoLondon
Score5340
Protected land share 50 km %1116
Landscape blanket share 50 km %014
Land share of disc %7097
Park area within 2 km119 hectares84 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 28 points.28
BilbaoLondon
Score4775
Tourist attractions within 2 km1785
Park area within 2 km119 hectares84 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. London leads by 37 points.37
BilbaoLondon
Score5289
Notable places within 2 km79649
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 17 points.17
BilbaoLondon
Score7154
Price level global60.884.9
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 7 points.7
BilbaoLondon
Score7063
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C8.2 °C to 23.8 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm38 mm to 67 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
London
8
9
12
15
18
22
24
23
20
16
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
London
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
London
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
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
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). London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoLondon
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 10 m
€124-216
LHR · 23 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
2 h 0 m
€61-144
LGW · 40 km
MalagaAGP
1 h 35 m
€77-114
BIO · 5 km
2 h 35 m
€119-292
1 stop
LGW · 40 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 10 m
€79-116
LGW · 40 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
3 h 10 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
1 h 5 m
€146-170
LHR · 23 km
AlicanteALC
1 h 20 m
€81-137
BIO · 5 km
2 h 20 m
€66-100
LGW · 40 km
Las PalmasLPA
3 h 5 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
LGW · 40 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
3 h 20 m
€128-183
1 stop
LGW · 40 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 23 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

MeasureBilbaoLondon
Official languageSpanishEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation19 m4 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoLondon
City population351,1248,799,728
People per km²8,4405,598
Museums within 10 km17215
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km14
Distinct cuisines in the centre54116
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month

Where else could you go?

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