VacationSelector

Bilbao or Santiago?

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 beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

Santiago
55
match

Wins on year-round weather 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.

BilbaoSantiago
Beaches & swimming. Bilbao leads by 31 points.31
BilbaoSantiago
Score310
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km10
Coast distance0 km89 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Santiago leads by 10 points.10
BilbaoSantiago
Score6272
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8401,317
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2632
Museums & heritage. Santiago leads by 7 points.7
BilbaoSantiago
Score3845
Museums within 10 km2587
Museums within 2 km of centre1230
Share of museums within 2 km %4834
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Santiago leads by 3 points.3
BilbaoSantiago
Score5861
Drinking venues within 4 km869912
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730542
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8459
Nightclubs within 4 km50112
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 1 points.1
BilbaoSantiago
Score5352
Protected land share 50 km %1117
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %70100
Park area within 2 km119 hectares88 hectares
Good for families. Santiago leads by 2 points.2
BilbaoSantiago
Score4749
Tourist attractions within 2 km1712
Park area within 2 km119 hectares88 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. Bilbao leads by 4 points.4
BilbaoSantiago
Score5248
Notable places within 2 km7962
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Santiago leads by 10 points.10
BilbaoSantiago
Score7181
Price level global60.846.2
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Santiago leads by 15 points.15
BilbaoSantiago
Score7085
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C14.3 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm0 mm to 87 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
Santiago
28
27
26
21
18
15
14
16
19
22
25
27
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Santiago
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Santiago
0
2
5
16
46
87
52
44
27
11
6
3
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Santiago
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
Santiago
11
9
8
6
5
3
4
5
6
8
9
11

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre). Santiago: 1991-2020 normals, Santiago Q. Normal (3.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoSantiago
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
13 h 15 m
€799-1378
1 stop
SCL · 14 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
13 h 45 m
€774-838
2 stops
SCL · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
14 h 25 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
14 h 45 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
14 h 25 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 5 km
16 h 5 m
€960-1123
SCL · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
SCL · 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

MeasureBilbaoSantiago
Official languageSpanishSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Chilean Peso (CLP)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCL220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-4, UTC-3 in summer
Emergency number112Police 133/134, ambulance 131, fire 132
Elevation19 m575 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsComodoro Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport (SCL)14 km from centre68 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoSantiago
City population351,1246,257,516
People per km²8,4407,468
Museums within 10 km1754
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre5464
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 Santiago 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.