VacationSelector

Bilbao or New York?

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 value for money and nature & day trips with your weighting.

New York
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat 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.

BilbaoNew York
Beaches & swimming. New York leads by 33 points.33
BilbaoNew York
Score3164
Swim season months13
Beaches 10 km117
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. New York leads by 33 points.33
BilbaoNew York
Score6295
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8406,032
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2638
Museums & heritage. New York leads by 22 points.22
BilbaoNew York
Score3860
Museums within 10 km25119
Museums within 2 km of centre1231
Share of museums within 2 km %4826
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. New York leads by 31 points.31
BilbaoNew York
Score5889
Drinking venues within 4 km8694,159
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre7302,015
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8448
Nightclubs within 4 km50192
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 14 points.14
BilbaoNew York
Score5339
Protected land share 50 km %114
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7069
Park area within 2 km119 hectares134 hectares
Good for families. New York leads by 25 points.25
BilbaoNew York
Score4772
Tourist attractions within 2 km1737
Park area within 2 km119 hectares134 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km07
Sights concentration. New York leads by 22 points.22
BilbaoNew York
Score5274
Notable places within 2 km79268
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 28 points.28
BilbaoNew York
Score7143
Price level global60.8100
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 12 points.12
BilbaoNew York
Score7058
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C4.5 °C to 30.1 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm74 mm to 112 mm
Dry months00
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
New York
5
6
10
16
22
27
30
29
25
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
New York
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
New York
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre). New York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoNew York
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
7 h 25 m
€474-553
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
7 h 55 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
7 h 10 m
€459-498
JFK · 21 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
7 h 55 m
€439-457
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
7 h 30 m
€445-517
JFK · 21 km
MalagaAGP
1 h 35 m
€77-114
BIO · 5 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
8 h 5 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
EWR · 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

MeasureBilbaoNew York
Official languageSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation19 m25 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoNew York
City population351,1248,804,190
People per km²8,4407,256
Museums within 10 km17157
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre54132
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month3 months

Where else could you go?

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