VacationSelector

Bilbao or Palermo?

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, 1 point apart

Bilbao
54
match

Wins on nature & day trips and places to eat with your weighting.

Palermo
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage 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.

BilbaoPalermo
Beaches & swimming. Palermo leads by 36 points.36
BilbaoPalermo
Score3167
Swim season months15
Beaches 10 km113
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Bilbao leads by 12 points.12
BilbaoPalermo
Score6250
Restaurants within 2 km of centre840807
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2613
Museums & heritage. Palermo leads by 12 points.12
BilbaoPalermo
Score3850
Museums within 10 km2532
Museums within 2 km of centre1226
Share of museums within 2 km %4881
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Bilbao leads by 5 points.5
BilbaoPalermo
Score5853
Drinking venues within 4 km869799
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730515
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8464
Nightclubs within 4 km5016
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 17 points.17
BilbaoPalermo
Score5336
Protected land share 50 km %114
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7045
Park area within 2 km119 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Bilbao leads by 6 points.6
BilbaoPalermo
Score4741
Tourist attractions within 2 km1716
Park area within 2 km119 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Palermo leads by 5 points.5
BilbaoPalermo
Score5257
Notable places within 2 km79104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 3 points.3
BilbaoPalermo
Score7168
Price level global60.864.9
Daily budget€122€155
Year-round weather. Palermo leads by 7 points.7
BilbaoPalermo
Score7077
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C12.6 °C to 27.8 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm4 mm to 71 mm
Dry months07
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
Palermo
13
13
14
16
20
24
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Palermo
15
14
15
16
19
22
26
27
25
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Palermo
48
45
35
35
18
9
4
11
37
67
71
69
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Palermo
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
Palermo
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
8
7
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). Palermo: 1961-1990 normals, Ustica (66.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoPalermo
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 50 m
€79-101
BIO · 5 km
1 h 45 m
€31-110
PMO · 25 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 10 m
€77-99
BIO · 5 km
1 h 10 m
€40-52
PMO · 25 km
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 25 m
€92-140
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
1 h 50 m
€49-107
PMO · 25 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
2 h 25 m
€101-135
PMO · 25 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
2 h 0 m
€175-215
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
SevillaSVQ
1 h 30 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
TPS · 80 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 15 m
€101-154
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
PMO · 25 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 2026-09 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

MeasureBilbaoPalermo
Official languageSpanishItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation19 m14 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsFalcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoPalermo
City population351,124630,167
People per km²8,4403,924
Museums within 10 km1742
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre5433
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month5 months

Where else could you go?

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