VacationSelector

Cannes or Monaco?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Cannes
49
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Monaco
48
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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 Cannes if evenings matter: about twice as many restaurants near the centre and around three times as many bars and clubs, plus more beaches to choose from.

Choose Monaco if you want a compact base: roughly twice as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, more protected land and park space nearby, and more attractions aimed at children.

Scoreboard

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

CannesMonaco
Beaches & swimming. Cannes and Monaco are level on 73.
CannesMonaco
Score7373
Swim season months44
Beaches 10 km6850
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Cannes leads by 11 points.11
CannesMonaco
Score5039
Restaurants within 2 km of centre473269
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1916
Museums & heritage. Monaco leads by 2 points.2
CannesMonaco
Score3638
Museums within 10 km3123
Museums within 2 km of centre58
Share of museums within 2 km %1635
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Cannes leads by 20 points.20
CannesMonaco
Score288
Drinking venues within 4 km18869
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre16463
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8791
Nightclubs within 4 km197
Nature & day trips. Monaco leads by 20 points.20
CannesMonaco
Score3353
Protected land share 50 km %1724
Landscape blanket share 50 km %1617
Land share of disc %5354
Park area within 2 km13 hectares15 hectares
Good for families. Monaco leads by 10 points.10
CannesMonaco
Score2535
Tourist attractions within 2 km714
Park area within 2 km13 hectares15 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km33
Sights concentration. Monaco leads by 8 points.8
CannesMonaco
Score5664
Notable places within 2 km95154
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for moneyNo source publishes a price level for Monaco.
Year-round weather. Cannes and Monaco are level on 74.
CannesMonaco
Score7474
Monthly daytime high13.3 °C to 27.9 °C13.3 °C to 27.9 °C
Monthly rainfall13 mm to 138 mm13 mm to 138 mm
Dry months33
0255075100

Where they differ

Cannes has about twice as many restaurants near the centre and a somewhat wider spread of kitchens, and about three times as many bars and nightclubs, most of them central. Evenings are easier to fill without planning ahead.

Monaco is the better base for time outdoors: 24% of the land around it is protected against 17% around Cannes, and there is more park space near the centre, so walks and trips out of town come more readily.

Where they are alike

Swimming is a given in both. The sea is 0km from Monaco's centre and 1km from Cannes's, and both share the same run of summer months with the sea at 21°C or more.

The climate is the same on both sides: daytime highs of about 13-28°C across the year and an identical rainfall pattern month by month. Heritage is close too, with similar museum numbers and 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach of each.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone travelling for food and evenings out should take Cannes: about twice as many restaurants near the centre, a wider spread of kitchens, and roughly three times as many bars and nightclubs, nearly all of them walkable.

Families are better served in Monaco, with about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre and more park space close by; both have 3 theme parks within reach, so that part is a draw.

A traveller on foot with a few days should also pick Monaco, where roughly twice as many notable places sit within walking distance and more of the surrounding land is protected for walks out of town.

What the numbers don't tell you

The figures carry no cost comparison. A day in Cannes is priced at about €160, but the dataset holds no equivalent figure for Monaco at all, so nothing here tells you which is the cheaper trip, or by how much.

Beach and weather standing rests on sea temperature and beach counts, neither of which says anything about how crowded August is when the sea reaches 25°C in both. The mild shoulder months come with their own catch: October and November stay warm enough by day but are the wettest of the year at 124-138mm.

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
Cannes
13
14
15
17
21
25
28
28
25
21
17
14
Monaco
13
14
15
17
21
25
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Cannes
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
23
20
18
16
Monaco
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
22
20
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Cannes
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
Monaco
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
Daylight, hours per day
Cannes
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Monaco
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cannes
5
6
7
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
5
5
Monaco
5
6
7
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cannes: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (18 km from centre). Monaco: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (19.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Cannes is the marginally better autumn choice: the sea holds 23°C in September and 18°C in November against Monaco's 22°C and 17°C. That window is wet, though, with 124mm in October and 138mm in November.

Otherwise the two run in step. July and August are the peak in both, with highs of 28°C, sea up to 25°C and only 13-18mm of rain. May and June are the quieter alternative, drier than autumn and with the sea already climbing.

Getting there

Flying fromCannesMonaco
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 20 km
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 20 km
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 18 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 10 m
€69-133
NCE · 20 km
1 h 10 m
€69-133
NCE · 18 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
€170-248
NCE · 20 km
1 h 50 m
€170-248
NCE · 18 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 40 m
€155-228
1 stop
NCE · 20 km
1 h 40 m
€155-228
1 stop
NCE · 18 km
LilleLIL
1 h 40 m
€162-220
NCE · 20 km
1 h 40 m
€162-220
NCE · 18 km
TunisTUN
1 h 35 m
€148-281
NCE · 20 km
1 h 35 m
€148-281
NCE · 18 km
NantesNTE
1 h 35 m
€129-163
NCE · 20 km
1 h 35 m
€129-163
NCE · 18 km
BucharestOTP, BBU
2 h 25 m
€120-160
NCE · 20 km
2 h 25 m
€120-160
NCE · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€666-799
1 stop
NCE · 20 km
8 h 10 m
€666-799
1 stop
NCE · 18 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

MeasureCannesMonaco
Official languageFrenchFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCEF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m68 m
Main airportNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)20 km from centre129 non-stop destinationsNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)18 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureCannesMonaco
City population74,35038,857
People per km²3,79318,503
Museums within 10 km1614
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre3829
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cannes or Monaco 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.