VacationSelector

Bilbao or Monaco?

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

Your match

Bilbao
✓ Best match
54
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Monaco
48
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

BilbaoMonaco
Beaches & swimming. Monaco leads by 42 points.42
BilbaoMonaco
Score3173
Swim season months14
Beaches 10 km150
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Bilbao leads by 23 points.23
BilbaoMonaco
Score6239
Restaurants within 2 km of centre840269
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2616
Museums & heritage. Bilbao and Monaco are level on 38.
BilbaoMonaco
Score3838
Museums within 10 km2523
Museums within 2 km of centre128
Share of museums within 2 km %4835
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Bilbao leads by 50 points.50
BilbaoMonaco
Score588
Drinking venues within 4 km86969
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre73063
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8491
Nightclubs within 4 km507
Nature & day trips. Bilbao and Monaco are level on 53.
BilbaoMonaco
Score5353
Protected land share 50 km %1124
Landscape blanket share 50 km %017
Land share of disc %7054
Park area within 2 km119 hectares15 hectares
Good for families. Bilbao leads by 12 points.12
BilbaoMonaco
Score4735
Tourist attractions within 2 km1714
Park area within 2 km119 hectares15 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. Monaco leads by 12 points.12
BilbaoMonaco
Score5264
Notable places within 2 km79154
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for moneyNo source publishes a price level for Monaco.
Year-round weather. Monaco leads by 4 points.4
BilbaoMonaco
Score7074
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C13.3 °C to 27.9 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm13 mm to 138 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
Monaco
13
14
15
17
21
25
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Monaco
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
22
20
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Monaco
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Monaco
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
Monaco
5
6
7
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
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). Monaco: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (19.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoMonaco
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 50 m
€137-165
NCE · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 18 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
1 h 15 m
€83-135
NCE · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 18 km
MalagaAGP
1 h 35 m
€77-114
BIO · 5 km
2 h 10 m
€125-148
1 stop
NCE · 18 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
NCE · 18 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
1 h 50 m
€170-248
NCE · 18 km
SevillaSVQ
1 h 30 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
NCE · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
8 h 10 m
€666-799
1 stop
NCE · 18 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
NCE · 18 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

MeasureBilbaoMonaco
Official languageSpanishFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCEF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation19 m68 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)18 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoMonaco
City population351,12438,857
People per km²8,44018,503
Museums within 10 km1714
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre5429
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bilbao or Monaco 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.