VacationSelector

Bilbao or Tromso?

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 nature & day trips with your weighting.

Tromso
27
match

Wins on 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.

BilbaoTromso
Beaches & swimming. Tromso leads by 21 points.21
BilbaoTromso
Score3152
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km114
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Bilbao leads by 38 points.38
BilbaoTromso
Score6224
Restaurants within 2 km of centre84085
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2616
Museums & heritage. Bilbao leads by 15 points.15
BilbaoTromso
Score3823
Museums within 10 km2510
Museums within 2 km of centre128
Share of museums within 2 km %4880
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Bilbao leads by 51 points.51
BilbaoTromso
Score587
Drinking venues within 4 km86967
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre73061
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8491
Nightclubs within 4 km505
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 42 points.42
BilbaoTromso
Score5311
Protected land share 50 km %119
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %7065
Park area within 2 km119 hectares7 hectares
Good for families. Bilbao leads by 33 points.33
BilbaoTromso
Score4714
Tourist attractions within 2 km179
Park area within 2 km119 hectares7 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Bilbao leads by 24 points.24
BilbaoTromso
Score5228
Notable places within 2 km7920
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 17 points.17
BilbaoTromso
Score7154
Price level global60.885.1
Daily budget€122€203
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 37 points.37
BilbaoTromso
Score7033
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C-1.1 °C to 16.3 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm56 mm to 128 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
Tromso
-1
-1
1
4
9
13
16
15
11
5
2
0
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Tromso
5
5
4
4
6
8
10
11
10
9
7
6
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Tromso
108
95
97
71
56
57
73
90
110
128
94
110
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Tromso
2
7
12
16
22
24
24
18
14
9
4
0
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
Tromso
0
1
3
6
8
8
8
6
3
2
0
0

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre). Tromso: 1991-2020 normals, Tromso (0.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoTromso
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 45 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
3 h 15 m
no fares
BIQ · 116 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 50 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
3 h 40 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
BerlinBER
2 h 30 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
TOS · 4 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

MeasureBilbaoTromso
Official languageSpanishNorwegian, Nynorsk, Bokmål, Sámi
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Norwegian Krone (NOK)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112Police 112, ambulance 113, fire 110
Elevation19 m20 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsTromsø Airport (TOS)4 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoTromso
City population351,12479,943
People per km²8,44032
Museums within 10 km178
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre5423
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 Tromso 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. 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.