VacationSelector

Bilbao or Zurich?

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 value for money and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Zurich
44
match

Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration 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.

BilbaoZurich
Beaches & swimming. Bilbao leads by 31 points.31
BilbaoZurich
Score310
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km123
Coast distance0 km632 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Zurich leads by 5 points.5
BilbaoZurich
Score6267
Restaurants within 2 km of centre840974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2630
Museums & heritage. Zurich leads by 18 points.18
BilbaoZurich
Score3856
Museums within 10 km2576
Museums within 2 km of centre1237
Share of museums within 2 km %4849
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Bilbao leads by 4 points.4
BilbaoZurich
Score5854
Drinking venues within 4 km869676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8482
Nightclubs within 4 km5074
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 16 points.16
BilbaoZurich
Score5337
Protected land share 50 km %1116
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %70100
Park area within 2 km119 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Bilbao leads by 11 points.11
BilbaoZurich
Score4736
Tourist attractions within 2 km178
Park area within 2 km119 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Zurich leads by 7 points.7
BilbaoZurich
Score5259
Notable places within 2 km79119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 36 points.36
BilbaoZurich
Score7135
Price level global60.8110.5
Daily budget€122€248
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 17 points.17
BilbaoZurich
Score7053
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm60 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
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
Zurich
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
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). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoZurich
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 9 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 50 m
€84-103
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
MalagaAGP
1 h 35 m
€77-114
BIO · 5 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
BSL · 81 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

MeasureBilbaoZurich
Official languageSpanishFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation19 m408 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoZurich
City population351,124452,421
People per km²8,4405,147
Museums within 10 km1763
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre5478
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 Zurich 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.