VacationSelector

Bilbao or Toulouse?

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.

Toulouse
48
match

Wins on good for families 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.

The verdict

Choose Bilbao if you want the coast and open country within reach: protected land all around, more park space near the centre, one beach and a sea that reaches 22°C in August, plus the wider choice of bars.

Choose Toulouse if you are travelling with children, or want museums close together and hotter, drier summers, with August highs near 29°C.

Scoreboard

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

BilbaoToulouse
Beaches & swimming. Bilbao leads by 31 points.31
BilbaoToulouse
Score310
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km11
Coast distance0 km145 km
Water distance0 km—
Places to eat. Toulouse leads by 8 points.8
BilbaoToulouse
Score6270
Restaurants within 2 km of centre840962
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2637
Museums & heritage. Toulouse leads by 13 points.13
BilbaoToulouse
Score3851
Museums within 10 km2527
Museums within 2 km of centre1218
Share of museums within 2 km %4867
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Bilbao leads by 15 points.15
BilbaoToulouse
Score5843
Drinking venues within 4 km869389
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730343
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8488
Nightclubs within 4 km5036
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 32 points.32
BilbaoToulouse
Score5321
Protected land share 50 km %111
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %70100
Park area within 2 km119 hectares43 hectares
Good for families. Toulouse leads by 19 points.19
BilbaoToulouse
Score4766
Tourist attractions within 2 km1780
Park area within 2 km119 hectares43 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Bilbao leads by 1 points.1
BilbaoToulouse
Score5251
Notable places within 2 km7972
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 9 points.9
BilbaoToulouse
Score7162
Price level global60.873.7
Daily budget€122€160
Year-round weather. Toulouse leads by 1 points.1
BilbaoToulouse
Score7071
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C9.7 °C to 28.5 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm37 mm to 74 mm
Dry months01
0255075100

Where they differ

Bilbao is the better base for days out: 11% of the land around it is protected against 1% around Toulouse, with far more park space near the centre. Both have one beach nearby, but only Bilbao's sea warms enough to swim, reaching 22°C in August. It also has about twice as many places to drink.

Toulouse has many times more tourist attractions near the centre, and two theme parks within reach where Bilbao has none. Its museums cluster more tightly around the centre.

Where they are alike

Both cities put a similar number of notable places within walking distance of the centre, so in each case a few days can be spent mostly on foot.

Weather is close too: both peak in August, 26°C in Bilbao and 29°C in Toulouse, and neither falls below 10°C by day in January. Each also has a comparable number of restaurants near the centre, though Toulouse spreads across a wider range of kitchens.

Which traveller are you?

Travelling with children, Toulouse is the easier choice: many more tourist attractions near the centre and two theme parks within reach, where Bilbao has none. Bilbao's larger park space near the centre is the counterweight.

For walking and swimming, Bilbao: 11% of the surrounding land is protected, far more than around Toulouse, there is more park space near the centre, and its beach has a sea reaching 22°C in August.

Culture-first visitors do better in Toulouse, where museums sit tightly around the centre and two UNESCO-listed places lie within day-trip reach. Bilbao holds the advantage after dark, with roughly twice the drinking venues.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget, €122 for Spain and €160 for France, is a national estimate of restaurant and hotel prices, not a measurement of either city. A city can sit further from its country's average than the gap between these two figures.

Bilbao's beach advantage is thinner than it looks: the sea is warm enough for swimming only at the height of summer, which is also when the coast is busiest, and autumn brings the year's heaviest rain, 170mm in November. Toulouse's warm summers sit beside January daytimes of 10°C, so an off-season visit is a different trip from the one the annual picture suggests.

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
Toulouse
10
11
15
18
21
26
28
29
25
20
14
10
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Toulouse
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Toulouse
53
37
45
65
74
64
40
45
46
54
55
49
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Toulouse
9
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
Toulouse
3
4
6
6
7
8
8
8
7
5
3
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). Toulouse: 1991-2020 normals, Toulouse / Blagnac (7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bilbao is at its best from July to September: highs of 25-26°C, sea at 21-22°C in July and August, and the driest stretch of its year at around 53-54mm. October still reaches 21°C, but rainfall climbs to 112mm, and November brings 170mm.

Toulouse peaks June to September, warmer at 26-29°C, with July and August at 40-45mm. Its wettest month is May at 74mm, and January is cold at 10°C but stays dry.

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoToulouse
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
1 h 25 m
€77-94
TLS · 7 km
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 20 m
€120-143
TLS · 7 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
TLS · 7 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
TLS · 7 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
TLS · 7 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
TLS · 7 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
TLS · 7 km
SevillaSVQ
1 h 30 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
TLS · 7 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 50 m
€157-160
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
TLS · 7 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
TLS · 7 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 2026-09 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

MeasureBilbaoToulouse
Official languageSpanishFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation19 m115 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsToulouse-Blagnac Airport (TLS)7 km from centre80 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoToulouse
City population351,124514,819
People per km²8,4404,352
Museums within 10 km1724
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre54101
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 Toulouse 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.