VacationSelector

Bilbao or Stockholm?

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 year-round weather and value for money with your weighting.

Stockholm
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on museums & heritage and beaches & swimming 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.

BilbaoStockholm
Beaches & swimming. Stockholm leads by 29 points.29
BilbaoStockholm
Score3160
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km173
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Stockholm leads by 14 points.14
BilbaoStockholm
Score6276
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8401,558
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2636
Museums & heritage. Stockholm leads by 31 points.31
BilbaoStockholm
Score3869
Museums within 10 km2574
Museums within 2 km of centre1247
Share of museums within 2 km %4864
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Stockholm leads by 6 points.6
BilbaoStockholm
Score5864
Drinking venues within 4 km8691,090
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730689
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8463
Nightclubs within 4 km50106
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 12 points.12
BilbaoStockholm
Score5341
Protected land share 50 km %117
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7077
Park area within 2 km119 hectares104 hectares
Good for families. Stockholm leads by 10 points.10
BilbaoStockholm
Score4757
Tourist attractions within 2 km1723
Park area within 2 km119 hectares104 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Stockholm leads by 27 points.27
BilbaoStockholm
Score5279
Notable places within 2 km79357
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 14 points.14
BilbaoStockholm
Score7157
Price level global60.880.3
Daily budget€122€169
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 17 points.17
BilbaoStockholm
Score7053
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C1 °C to 23.6 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm27 mm to 66 mm
Dry months05
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
Stockholm
1
1
5
11
17
21
24
22
17
10
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Stockholm
3
2
2
3
7
12
16
17
14
10
7
5
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Stockholm
37
29
27
29
34
61
60
66
53
51
47
47
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Stockholm
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
Stockholm
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
6
3
1
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre). Stockholm: 1991-2020 normals, Stockholm Observatoriet (26.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoStockholm
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
2 h 25 m
€89-139
ARN · 36 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
3 h 25 m
€90-234
ARN · 36 km
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
ARN · 36 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
2 h 0 m
€153-185
ARN · 36 km
MalagaAGP
1 h 35 m
€77-114
BIO · 5 km
4 h 15 m
€126-131
ARN · 36 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
2 h 15 m
€202-238
1 stop
ARN · 36 km
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 45 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 20 m
€84-99
ARN · 36 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 5 m
€152-213
1 stop
ARN · 36 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
8 h 5 m
no fares
ARN · 36 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
5 h 0 m
no fares
ARN · 36 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

MeasureBilbaoStockholm
Official languageSpanishSwedish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swedish Krona (SEK)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation19 m22 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsStockholm-Arlanda Airport (ARN)36 km from centre172 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoStockholm
City population351,124984,748
People per km²8,4405,260
Museums within 10 km17266
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre5481
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 Stockholm 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.