VacationSelector

Bilbao or Tirana?

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 beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Tirana
51
match

Wins on value for money and good for families 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.

BilbaoTirana
Beaches & swimming. Bilbao leads by 14 points.14
BilbaoTirana
Score3117
Swim season months15
Beaches 10 km10
Coast distance0 km26 km
Water distance0 km26 km
Places to eat. Bilbao leads by 7 points.7
BilbaoTirana
Score6255
Restaurants within 2 km of centre840572
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2622
Museums & heritage. Bilbao leads by 13 points.13
BilbaoTirana
Score3825
Museums within 10 km2512
Museums within 2 km of centre128
Share of museums within 2 km %4867
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Bilbao and Tirana are level on 58.
BilbaoTirana
Score5858
Drinking venues within 4 km869945
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730683
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8472
Nightclubs within 4 km5029
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 4 points.4
BilbaoTirana
Score5349
Protected land share 50 km %1111
Landscape blanket share 50 km %03
Land share of disc %7083
Park area within 2 km119 hectares147 hectares
Good for families. Tirana leads by 5 points.5
BilbaoTirana
Score4752
Tourist attractions within 2 km1721
Park area within 2 km119 hectares147 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Tirana leads by 1 points.1
BilbaoTirana
Score5253
Notable places within 2 km7983
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tirana leads by 13 points.13
BilbaoTirana
Score7184
Price level global60.842.6
Daily budget€122€76
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 3 points.3
BilbaoTirana
Score7067
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C11.6 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm43 mm to 172 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
Tirana
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Tirana
15
14
14
16
19
23
24
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Tirana
143
117
116
103
84
66
43
55
78
114
172
148
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Tirana
10
11
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
Tirana
4
4
5
6
9
10
12
11
9
7
4
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre). Tirana: 1961-1990 normals, Tirana (3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoTirana
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
2 h 25 m
€74-123
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
TIA · 13 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
2 h 55 m
€62-138
TIA · 13 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
2 h 30 m
€73-102
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
2 h 35 m
€169-220
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 10 m
€94-143
1 stop
TIA · 13 km
MalagaAGP
1 h 35 m
€77-114
BIO · 5 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
TIA · 13 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
3 h 5 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 5 m
€68-80
TIA · 13 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
TIA · 13 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 50 m
€79-101
BIO · 5 km
1 h 50 m
€33-74
TIA · 13 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

MeasureBilbaoTirana
Official languageSpanishAlbanian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Lek (ALL)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation19 m110 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsTirana International Airport Mother Teresa (TIA)13 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoTirana
City population351,124389,323
People per km²8,4409,314
Museums within 10 km1711
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre5446
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bilbao or Tirana 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.