VacationSelector

Bilbao or Paris?

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 and value for money with your weighting.

Paris
✓ Best match
67
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

BilbaoParis
Beaches & swimming. Bilbao leads by 31 points.31
BilbaoParis
Score310
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km12
Coast distance0 km149 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Paris leads by 28 points.28
BilbaoParis
Score6290
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8404,732
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2633
Museums & heritage. Paris leads by 38 points.38
BilbaoParis
Score3876
Museums within 10 km25185
Museums within 2 km of centre1265
Share of museums within 2 km %4835
Unesco sites within 50 km14
Nightlife. Paris leads by 30 points.30
BilbaoParis
Score5888
Drinking venues within 4 km8693,796
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre7301,694
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8445
Nightclubs within 4 km50201
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 5 points.5
BilbaoParis
Score5348
Protected land share 50 km %1128
Landscape blanket share 50 km %026
Land share of disc %70100
Park area within 2 km119 hectares82 hectares
Good for families. Paris leads by 28 points.28
BilbaoParis
Score4775
Tourist attractions within 2 km1789
Park area within 2 km119 hectares82 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. Paris leads by 42 points.42
BilbaoParis
Score5294
Notable places within 2 km79865
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 9 points.9
BilbaoParis
Score7162
Price level global60.873.7
Daily budget€122€160
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 4 points.4
BilbaoParis
Score7066
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C7.8 °C to 26 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm38 mm to 75 mm
Dry months01
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
Paris
8
9
13
17
20
24
26
26
22
17
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Paris
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Paris
45
38
41
45
75
51
58
54
51
55
54
62
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Paris
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
Paris
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). Paris: 1991-2020 normals, Paris-Montsouris (4.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoParis
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 55 m
€107-141
ORY · 14 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
1 h 40 m
€110-135
CDG · 22 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
1 h 5 m
€63-103
CDG · 22 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
1 h 10 m
€188-212
CDG · 22 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
1 h 30 m
€160-210
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 10 m
€122-134
CDG · 22 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
7 h 30 m
€579-648
1 stop
CDG · 22 km
SevillaSVQ
1 h 30 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ORY · 14 km
MalagaAGP
1 h 35 m
€77-114
BIO · 5 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ORY · 14 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
3 h 10 m
€130-199
ORY · 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

MeasureBilbaoParis
Official languageSpanishFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation19 m27 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsCharles de Gaulle International Airport (CDG)22 km from centre277 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoParis
City population351,1242,103,778
People per km²8,44019,960
Museums within 10 km17251
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km14
Distinct cuisines in the centre54169
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 Paris 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.