VacationSelector

Bilbao or Toledo?

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 nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Toledo
40
match

Wins on museums & heritage 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.

The verdict

Choose Bilbao if you want to eat and drink your way through a trip, want green country and a beach within reach, and can live with rain: it stays mild, topping out around 26°C.

Choose Toledo if you want heritage packed tightly into a small centre, dry days most of the year, and quiet evenings rather than late ones.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

BilbaoToledo
Beaches & swimming. Bilbao leads by 31 points.31
BilbaoToledo
Score310
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km11
Coast distance0 km320 km
Water distance0 km—
Places to eat. Bilbao leads by 38 points.38
BilbaoToledo
Score6224
Restaurants within 2 km of centre840249
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km267
Museums & heritage. Toledo leads by 8 points.8
BilbaoToledo
Score3846
Museums within 10 km2519
Museums within 2 km of centre1219
Share of museums within 2 km %48100
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Bilbao leads by 41 points.41
BilbaoToledo
Score5817
Drinking venues within 4 km869120
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730115
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8496
Nightclubs within 4 km505
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 25 points.25
BilbaoToledo
Score5328
Protected land share 50 km %114
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %70100
Park area within 2 km119 hectares59 hectares
Good for families. Toledo leads by 7 points.7
BilbaoToledo
Score4754
Tourist attractions within 2 km1732
Park area within 2 km119 hectares59 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Bilbao leads by 6 points.6
BilbaoToledo
Score5246
Notable places within 2 km7955
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao and Toledo are level on 71.
BilbaoToledo
Score7171
Price level global60.860.8
Daily budget€122€122
Year-round weather. Toledo leads by 4 points.4
BilbaoToledo
Score7074
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C11.9 °C to 35.1 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm6 mm to 49 mm
Dry months011
0255075100

Where they differ

Bilbao has about three times as many restaurants near the centre as Toledo, and a much wider range of kitchens. It also has many times as many bars and clubs. Its coast gives one month with the sea at 22°C, and it is the greener base: 11% protected land against 4%, and twice the park space near the centre.

Toledo has about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre, a theme park within reach where Bilbao has none, and 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Bilbao's 1.

Where they are alike

Their weather works over long stretches of the year in both cases. Neither has a hard winter: January highs sit at 12-14°C, so a cold-season visit is workable in either, and both open up through spring and hold into autumn.

Beyond that, both are cities you cover on foot: the notable places cluster near the centre in each, museums included. Both also give families something to do, Toledo through its attractions, Bilbao through its parks.

Which traveller are you?

Eating and going out: Bilbao. It has about three times as many restaurants near the centre and a far wider spread of kitchens, plus many times the bars and clubs, nearly all within walking distance of where you sleep.

Heritage on foot with children: Toledo. Roughly twice as many tourist attractions sit near its centre, its museums are tightly grouped, there is a theme park within reach, and 2 UNESCO-listed places lie within day-trip range.

Walking, greenery and a swim: Bilbao. Protected land covers 11% of its surroundings against 4% around Toledo, there is twice the park space near the centre, and one beach with the sea at 22°C in August.

What the numbers don't tell you

Toledo's dry, sunny record hides its high summer, which is almost rainless but reaches 35°C, heat you plan around rather than enjoy. Bilbao's milder summer is paid for at the other end of the year: November alone brings 170mm. Its beach advantage rests on one beach and a single month of warm enough sea.

The value comparison here carries no information: both cities take the same national price level by construction. The €122 daily figure is a country-wide estimate rather than a measurement of either place, so neither is the cheaper trip on this evidence.

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
Toledo
12
14
18
21
25
31
35
35
29
23
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Toledo
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Toledo
26
25
33
40
39
19
6
9
21
49
38
35
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Toledo
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
Toledo
5
6
7
8
10
11
13
12
9
7
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre). Toledo: 1991-2020 normals, Toledo (2.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bilbao is at its best in July and August: highs of 25-26°C, sea at 21-22°C, and its driest stretch of the year at 53-54mm. Either side of that, autumn turns wet quickly, so the swimming window is short.

Toledo works better in May and September, with highs of 25°C and 29°C and rain of 40mm or less. Its high summer is almost rainless but hot, with highs of 35°C, and its winters are dry and cool rather than washed out.

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoToledo
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 80 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 80 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 20 m
€56-238
MAD · 80 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 80 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
3 h 10 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 50 m
€109-153
MAD · 80 km
Las PalmasLPA
3 h 5 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 45 m
€77-197
MAD · 80 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 80 km
MalagaAGP
1 h 35 m
€77-114
BIO · 5 km
1 h 10 m
€78-91
MAD · 80 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 80 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 80 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

MeasureBilbaoToledo
Official languageSpanishSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation19 m523 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)80 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoToledo
City population351,12487,216
People per km²8,440376
Museums within 10 km1713
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre5413
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 Toledo 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.