VacationSelector

Bilbao or Madrid?

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 with your weighting.

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Madrid if you are going for museums, a dense centre to walk through and late nights out: far more museums and bars close to the middle, more for children, and theme parks that Bilbao has none of.

Choose Bilbao if you want to swim and to avoid extreme heat: the sea reaches 22°C in August, and summer afternoons there sit well below Madrid's 33°C.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

BilbaoMadrid
Beaches & swimming. Bilbao leads by 31 points.31
BilbaoMadrid
Score310
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km14
Coast distance0 km305 km
Water distance0 km—
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 21 points.21
BilbaoMadrid
Score6283
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8403,508
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2628
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 37 points.37
BilbaoMadrid
Score3875
Museums within 10 km2597
Museums within 2 km of centre1259
Share of museums within 2 km %4861
Unesco sites within 50 km14
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 23 points.23
BilbaoMadrid
Score5881
Drinking venues within 4 km8692,414
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre7301,498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8462
Nightclubs within 4 km50341
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 10 points.10
BilbaoMadrid
Score5363
Protected land share 50 km %1119
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %70100
Park area within 2 km119 hectares187 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 30 points.30
BilbaoMadrid
Score4777
Tourist attractions within 2 km1761
Park area within 2 km119 hectares187 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 23 points.23
BilbaoMadrid
Score5275
Notable places within 2 km79288
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao and Madrid are level on 71.
BilbaoMadrid
Score7171
Price level global60.860.8
Daily budget€122€122
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 2 points.2
BilbaoMadrid
Score7072
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C10 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm9 mm to 64 mm
Dry months07
0255075100

Where they differ

Bilbao's advantage is the water. It has one month with the sea at 21°C or more, peaking at 22°C in August, where Madrid has none, so swimming can be part of a Bilbao trip and cannot be part of a Madrid one.

Madrid has about three times as many museums, and 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Bilbao's 1, with its collections sitting more tightly around the centre. For families it also has about three times as many attractions near the centre, twice as much park space, and 3 theme parks where Bilbao has none.

Where they are alike

Neither city has a hard winter. January afternoons run about 10°C in Madrid and 14°C in Bilbao, and both stay comfortable to walk around for most of the year, so spring and autumn work in either.

Both also reach open country, with protected land around each, 19% near Madrid and 11% near Bilbao, and parks inside the city. The range of kitchens is similar, and in both the drinking places cluster near the centre.

Which traveller are you?

If you are travelling for museums and heritage, Madrid is the clear pick: roughly three times as many museums, four UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Bilbao's one, and notable buildings packed tightly around the centre.

Families with children are better served in Madrid too: about three times as many attractions near the centre, twice as much park space, and 3 theme parks within reach where Bilbao has none.

If the point of the trip is swimming, or simply not being cooked, take Bilbao: the sea reaches 22°C in August and summer afternoons stop near 26°C, while Madrid has no sea at swimming temperature.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figure here is a national price level, identical for both by construction, so the comparison between these two cities carries no information. The €122 daily budget beside it is a single national estimate rather than a measurement of Bilbao or Madrid, so read it as a rough guide, not as a trait of either.

Beach counts also mislead. Madrid is credited with beaches nearby but has no month with the sea at 21°C or more, so that is not swimming as most people mean it, and Bilbao's swimmable window is essentially one month. The driest months in both are the hottest and the busiest.

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
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
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). Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bilbao is best from July to September: its warmest afternoons at 25-26°C, the only stretch when the sea reaches 22°C, and its driest weeks of the year. The rest of the calendar is noticeably wetter, and November is the month to avoid, at 170mm.

Madrid is better in June and again in September, with afternoons at 27-29°C and light rain, 20-24mm. Midsummer is drier still but climbs to 33°C, which suits some travellers and not others. Winter afternoons are cool rather than cold.

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoMadrid
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 20 m
€56-238
MAD · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
3 h 10 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 50 m
€109-153
MAD · 14 km
Las PalmasLPA
3 h 5 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 45 m
€77-197
MAD · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 14 km
MalagaAGP
1 h 35 m
€77-114
BIO · 5 km
1 h 10 m
€78-91
MAD · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 14 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

MeasureBilbaoMadrid
Official languageSpanishSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation19 m663 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoMadrid
City population351,1243,506,730
People per km²8,4405,801
Museums within 10 km1788
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km14
Distinct cuisines in the centre54106
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 Madrid 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.