VacationSelector

Bilbao or Oslo?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Bilbao
54
match

Wins on year-round weather and value for money with your weighting.

Oslo
56
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.

BilbaoOslo
Beaches & swimming. Oslo leads by 29 points.29
BilbaoOslo
Score3160
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km1163
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Oslo leads by 5 points.5
BilbaoOslo
Score6267
Restaurants within 2 km of centre840853
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2634
Museums & heritage. Oslo leads by 10 points.10
BilbaoOslo
Score3848
Museums within 10 km2570
Museums within 2 km of centre1237
Share of museums within 2 km %4853
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Bilbao leads by 5 points.5
BilbaoOslo
Score5853
Drinking venues within 4 km869695
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730562
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8481
Nightclubs within 4 km5041
Nature & day trips. Oslo leads by 8 points.8
BilbaoOslo
Score5361
Protected land share 50 km %1122
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %7094
Park area within 2 km119 hectares88 hectares
Good for families. Oslo leads by 1 points.1
BilbaoOslo
Score4748
Tourist attractions within 2 km1713
Park area within 2 km119 hectares88 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Oslo leads by 17 points.17
BilbaoOslo
Score5269
Notable places within 2 km79207
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 17 points.17
BilbaoOslo
Score7154
Price level global60.885.1
Daily budget€122€203
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 22 points.22
BilbaoOslo
Score7048
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C0.1 °C to 22.7 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm40 mm to 104 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
Oslo
0
1
5
11
17
20
23
21
16
10
4
1
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Oslo
4
3
3
6
11
15
18
18
15
12
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Oslo
58
46
40
48
60
80
86
104
81
94
84
54
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Oslo
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
Oslo
2
3
5
6
8
8
8
7
5
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre). Oslo: 1991-2020 normals, Oslo-Blindern (4.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoOslo
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
2 h 5 m
€46-96
OSL · 37 km
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
3 h 30 m
€110-169
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
3 h 15 m
€109-152
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 45 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 15 m
€92-109
OSL · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
1 h 50 m
€162-207
OSL · 37 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
3 h 15 m
no fares
BIQ · 116 km
1 h 5 m
€83-98
OSL · 37 km
MalagaAGP
1 h 35 m
€77-114
BIO · 5 km
4 h 0 m
no fares
OSL · 37 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
2 h 15 m
€187-227
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 0 m
€163-249
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
7 h 40 m
no fares
OSL · 37 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

MeasureBilbaoOslo
Official languageSpanishNorwegian, Nynorsk, Bokmål, Sámi
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Norwegian Krone (NOK)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112Police 112, ambulance 113, fire 110
Elevation19 m23 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsOslo-Gardermoen International Airport (OSL)37 km from centre58 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoOslo
City population351,124717,710
People per km²8,440
Museums within 10 km1760
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre5475
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 Oslo 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.