VacationSelector

Bilbao or San Jose?

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 sights concentration and value for money with your weighting.

San Jose
39
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather 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.

BilbaoSan Jose
Beaches & swimming. Bilbao leads by 23 points.23
BilbaoSan Jose
Score318
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km11
Coast distance0 km14 km
Water distance0 km14 km
Places to eat. Bilbao leads by 21 points.21
BilbaoSan Jose
Score6241
Restaurants within 2 km of centre840313
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2616
Museums & heritage. Bilbao leads by 12 points.12
BilbaoSan Jose
Score3826
Museums within 10 km2520
Museums within 2 km of centre129
Share of museums within 2 km %4845
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Bilbao leads by 27 points.27
BilbaoSan Jose
Score5831
Drinking venues within 4 km869231
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre73088
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8438
Nightclubs within 4 km5016
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 17 points.17
BilbaoSan Jose
Score5370
Protected land share 50 km %1126
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %7091
Park area within 2 km119 hectares101 hectares
Good for families. Bilbao leads by 14 points.14
BilbaoSan Jose
Score4733
Tourist attractions within 2 km172
Park area within 2 km119 hectares101 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Bilbao leads by 38 points.38
BilbaoSan Jose
Score5214
Notable places within 2 km799
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 28 points.28
BilbaoSan Jose
Score7143
Price level global60.8100
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 15 points.15
BilbaoSan Jose
Score7085
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C15.4 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm0 mm to 78 mm
Dry months08
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
San Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Jose
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
San Jose
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). San Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoSan Jose
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
11 h 55 m
€653-1326
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
11 h 45 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 30 m
€129-223
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 5 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
SFO · 57 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

MeasureBilbaoSan Jose
Official languageSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation19 m25 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoSan Jose
City population351,1241,013,240
People per km²8,4402,167
Museums within 10 km1719
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre5430
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 San Jose 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.