VacationSelector

Cannes or Pisa?

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

Your match

Cannes
✓ Best match
49
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.

Pisa
45
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 Cannes if the trip is built around swimming and the sea: the water sits 1km from the centre, there are dozens of beaches within easy reach, and the season runs long enough to plan a week around it.

Choose Pisa if you would rather have heritage and family days out: more attractions and park space close to the centre, and UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach.

Scoreboard

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

CannesPisa
Beaches & swimming. Cannes leads by 52 points.52
CannesPisa
Score7321
Swim season months44
Beaches 10 km681
Coast distance1 km10 km
Water distance1 km10 km
Places to eat. Cannes leads by 16 points.16
CannesPisa
Score5034
Restaurants within 2 km of centre473379
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km199
Museums & heritage. Pisa leads by 19 points.19
CannesPisa
Score3655
Museums within 10 km3127
Museums within 2 km of centre522
Share of museums within 2 km %1681
Unesco sites within 50 km23
Nightlife. Cannes and Pisa are level on 28.
CannesPisa
Score2828
Drinking venues within 4 km188232
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre164203
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8788
Nightclubs within 4 km193
Nature & day trips. Pisa leads by 6 points.6
CannesPisa
Score3339
Protected land share 50 km %179
Landscape blanket share 50 km %160
Land share of disc %5365
Park area within 2 km13 hectares40 hectares
Good for families. Pisa leads by 22 points.22
CannesPisa
Score2547
Tourist attractions within 2 km720
Park area within 2 km13 hectares40 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Cannes leads by 9 points.9
CannesPisa
Score5647
Notable places within 2 km9558
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Pisa leads by 6 points.6
CannesPisa
Score6268
Price level global73.764.9
Daily budget€160€155
Year-round weather. Cannes leads by 4 points.4
CannesPisa
Score7470
Monthly daytime high13.3 °C to 27.9 °C11.4 °C to 30.3 °C
Monthly rainfall13 mm to 138 mm32 mm to 132 mm
Dry months32
0255075100

Where they differ

Cannes is the coastal one: the sea is 1km from the centre against 10km in Pisa, and 68 beaches nearby against one. It also concentrates more notable places into walking distance of the centre, with somewhat more restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens.

Pisa is the better base with children and for museum days: far more tourist attractions and park space near the centre, museums clustered tightly around it, and three UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Cannes's two.

Where they are alike

Nightlife is where they land closest. Neither is a big going-out city, and in both the venues cluster near the centre: Pisa has somewhat more places to drink, Cannes more nightclubs.

They are close on climate, day trips and cost. Both are warm in summer, mild in winter, and both have four months of sea at 21°C or more. National daily budgets sit close, €160 and €155. Cannes has more protected land nearby, Pisa more park space in town.

Which traveller are you?

If the point of the trip is swimming, Cannes settles it: the sea is 1km from the centre, with 68 beaches nearby against Pisa's one, and four months warm enough to be in the water.

Travelling with children, Pisa has far more attractions and park space close to the centre, and museums tight enough to walk between. Cannes counters mainly with three theme parks within reach against Pisa's two.

For eating and evenings out, Cannes has somewhat more restaurants near the centre, a much wider spread of kitchens and more nightclubs; Pisa has somewhat more places to drink but a quieter late-night side.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures are national estimates, the price level for restaurants and hotels across each country rather than a measurement of Cannes or Pisa. A resort town or a heavily visited city can sit far from its country's average, by more than the gap between €160 and €155, so they say nothing about which trip costs more.

Cannes's beach advantage is seasonal and shared: the months when the sea is warmest are the ones everyone else picks, and nothing in these figures shows how crowded the shore gets then. Autumn warmth is misleading too, arriving with rainfall of 84mm in Cannes and 102mm in Pisa.

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
Pisa
11
13
16
18
23
27
30
30
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Cannes
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
23
20
18
16
Pisa
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Cannes
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
Pisa
68
58
59
65
63
41
32
35
102
125
132
95
Daylight, hours per day
Cannes
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Pisa
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
Pisa
4
4
6
6
8
9
11
10
7
5
4
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cannes: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (18 km from centre). Pisa: 1991-2020 normals, Pisa / S. Giusto (3.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Cannes peaks in July-August: highs of 28°C, sea at 24-25°C, and next to no rain at 13-18mm. June is close behind, with the sea already warm enough to swim, and the beaches still work into early autumn before the rain returns.

Pisa is easier in May-June, when highs run 23-27°C, before July-August reach 30°C. Rain separates the shoulder: Pisa takes 63mm of spring rain against Cannes's 42mm, and both turn wet in autumn.

Getting there

Flying fromCannesPisa
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 20 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 20 km
2 h 5 m
€48-62
PSA · 4 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 10 m
€69-133
NCE · 20 km
55 m
€136-139
1 stop
FLR · 65 km
TiranaTIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
NCE · 20 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
€170-248
NCE · 20 km
1 h 55 m
€210-262
1 stop
PSA · 4 km
PalermoPMO
1 h 40 m
no fares
MRS · 146 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 40 m
€155-228
1 stop
NCE · 20 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 55 m
no fares
MRS · 146 km
1 h 35 m
€55-66
PSA · 4 km
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 20 m
€174-218
1 stop
NCE · 20 km
2 h 15 m
€102-140
1 stop
PSA · 4 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 55 m
no fares
NCE · 20 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
PSA · 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

MeasureCannesPisa
Official languageFrenchItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m4 m
Main airportNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)20 km from centre129 non-stop destinationsPisa International Airport (PSA)4 km from centre81 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCannesPisa
City population74,35088,737
People per km²3,793479
Museums within 10 km1627
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km23
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 Pisa 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.