VacationSelector

Cannes or Montpellier?

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, 2 points apart

Cannes
49
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

Montpellier
47
match

Wins on good for families and places to eat 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 swimming is the point: the sea is 1km from the centre, there are 68 beaches nearby, and the notable sights sit close together on foot.

Choose Montpellier if you want a larger city with a wider choice of restaurants and bars, more park space near the centre, and more to do with children.

Scoreboard

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

CannesMontpellier
Beaches & swimming. Cannes leads by 41 points.41
CannesMontpellier
Score7332
Swim season months42
Beaches 10 km688
Coast distance1 km9 km
Water distance1 km9 km
Places to eat. Montpellier leads by 15 points.15
CannesMontpellier
Score5065
Restaurants within 2 km of centre473737
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1934
Museums & heritage. Cannes leads by 10 points.10
CannesMontpellier
Score3626
Museums within 10 km3114
Museums within 2 km of centre53
Share of museums within 2 km %1621
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Montpellier leads by 10 points.10
CannesMontpellier
Score2838
Drinking venues within 4 km188318
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre164265
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8783
Nightclubs within 4 km1925
Nature & day trips. Montpellier leads by 10 points.10
CannesMontpellier
Score3343
Protected land share 50 km %1715
Landscape blanket share 50 km %1610
Land share of disc %5370
Park area within 2 km13 hectares55 hectares
Good for families. Montpellier leads by 19 points.19
CannesMontpellier
Score2544
Tourist attractions within 2 km78
Park area within 2 km13 hectares55 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km37
Sights concentration. Cannes leads by 18 points.18
CannesMontpellier
Score5638
Notable places within 2 km9535
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cannes and Montpellier are level on 62.
CannesMontpellier
Score6262
Price level global73.773.7
Daily budget€160€160
Year-round weather. Cannes and Montpellier are level on 74.
CannesMontpellier
Score7474
Monthly daytime high13.3 °C to 27.9 °C12 °C to 29.6 °C
Monthly rainfall13 mm to 138 mm17 mm to 93 mm
Dry months35
0255075100

Where they differ

Cannes puts the water 1km from its centre against 9km at Montpellier, with 68 beaches nearby rather than 8, and a longer stretch of the year with the sea warm enough for swimming. Its notable places are also far more tightly packed within walking distance of the centre.

Montpellier is the easier city with children: many times as much park space near the centre, and 7 theme parks within reach against Cannes's 3, though the two have a similar number of attractions near the centre.

Where they are alike

Both sit in the same weather band. Highs run 13-28°C at Cannes and 12-30°C at Montpellier, January is the coolest month in each, and annual sunshine is close, around 2700 hours in both. Either works at most times of year.

Beyond that, both keep their drinking places mostly near the centre, both have 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and a similar share of the land around each is protected. Museum holdings are modest in both.

Which traveller are you?

If swimming shapes the holiday, Cannes is the straightforward answer: the sea is 1km from the centre rather than 9km, with 68 beaches nearby and a longer run of months warm enough to swim.

If you eat out every night and want the evening to continue afterwards, Montpellier: about twice as many restaurants near the centre, a much wider range of kitchens, and more bars and clubs, most of them walkable.

With children, Montpellier again: many times more park space near the centre, 7 theme parks within reach against 3, and more room to spread out.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figures for these two are identical by construction: they reflect a national price level, not either city, so the comparison carries no information. The €160 daily budget beside them is one national estimate rather than a measurement of either place, and says nothing about which will cost you more.

Cannes's beach advantage is concentrated in the two months when the sea is warmest, and those are the months everyone else comes; a small town absorbing that traffic feels different from the same coast in May. Montpellier's beaches are 9km from the centre, so a swim there is a planned outing rather than a walk down the road.

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
Montpellier
12
13
16
19
23
27
30
29
25
21
16
13
Sea temperature, °C
Cannes
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
23
20
18
16
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Cannes
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
Daylight, hours per day
Cannes
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Montpellier
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
Montpellier
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
10
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). Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Cannes peaks in July and August, when the sea reaches 24-25°C and rain almost stops, at 13-18mm. Its autumn is the catch: October and November bring 124-138mm, the wettest stretch either city sees, and the swimming season has gone by then.

Montpellier suits spring better. April and May are warmer on land than Cannes at 19-23°C and drier, and June stays comfortable at 27°C. Its own autumn turns wet, though at a consistently lower level than Cannes's.

Getting there

Flying fromCannesMontpellier
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 20 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 20 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 25 m
no fares
NCE · 20 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
BastiaBIA
55 m
no fares
NCE · 20 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
AjaccioAJA
55 m
no fares
NCE · 20 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
TunisTUN
1 h 35 m
€148-281
NCE · 20 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MadridMAD
1 h 50 m
€137-165
NCE · 20 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MunichMUC
1 h 25 m
€198-243
1 stop
NCE · 20 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 55 m
no fares
NCE · 20 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 146 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 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

MeasureCannesMontpellier
Official languageFrenchFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m7 m
Main airportNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)20 km from centre129 non-stop destinationsMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureCannesMontpellier
City population74,350310,240
People per km²3,7935,452
Museums within 10 km1614
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre3865
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cannes or Montpellier 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.