VacationSelector

Bilbao or Sarajevo?

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 nature & day trips and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Sarajevo
44
match

Wins on value for money 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.

BilbaoSarajevo
Beaches & swimming. Bilbao leads by 31 points.31
BilbaoSarajevo
Score310
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km10
Coast distance0 km120 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Bilbao leads by 24 points.24
BilbaoSarajevo
Score6238
Restaurants within 2 km of centre840227
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2617
Museums & heritage. Sarajevo leads by 14 points.14
BilbaoSarajevo
Score3852
Museums within 10 km2538
Museums within 2 km of centre1233
Share of museums within 2 km %4887
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Bilbao leads by 17 points.17
BilbaoSarajevo
Score5841
Drinking venues within 4 km869416
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730292
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8470
Nightclubs within 4 km5011
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 33 points.33
BilbaoSarajevo
Score5320
Protected land share 50 km %112
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %70100
Park area within 2 km119 hectares37 hectares
Good for families. Bilbao leads by 11 points.11
BilbaoSarajevo
Score4736
Tourist attractions within 2 km1716
Park area within 2 km119 hectares37 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Sarajevo leads by 9 points.9
BilbaoSarajevo
Score5261
Notable places within 2 km79131
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sarajevo leads by 17 points.17
BilbaoSarajevo
Score7188
Price level global60.837.4
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 10 points.10
BilbaoSarajevo
Score7060
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C4.2 °C to 28.3 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm66 mm to 91 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
Sarajevo
4
7
12
17
21
25
28
28
22
17
11
4
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Sarajevo
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Sarajevo
68
67
67
78
88
88
75
66
88
91
85
89
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sarajevo
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
Sarajevo
3
3
5
5
6
8
8
8
6
5
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre). Sarajevo: 1991-2020 normals, Sarajevo-Bejelave (2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoSarajevo
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
DBV · 144 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
DBV · 144 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
2 h 35 m
€139-181
1 stop
SJJ · 7 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
DBV · 144 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
2 h 15 m
€152-322
1 stop
SJJ · 7 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 50 m
€203-243
1 stop
SJJ · 7 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 5 km
1 h 45 m
€105-169
SJJ · 7 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
2 h 25 m
€182-228
1 stop
DBV · 144 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
1 h 40 m
€240-268
DBV · 144 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
DBV · 144 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

MeasureBilbaoSarajevo
Official languageSpanishCroatian, Serbian, Bosnian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Convertible Mark (BAM)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation19 m518 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsSarajevo International Airport (SJJ)7 km from centre37 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoSarajevo
City population351,124275,524
People per km²8,4401,947
Museums within 10 km1724
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre5435
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 Sarajevo 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.