VacationSelector

Cannes or Venice?

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

Your match

Cannes
49
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather with your weighting.

Venice
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on museums & heritage 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 the trip is built around swimming and open country: the sea is 1km from the centre, there are 68 beaches within reach, and much of the surrounding land is protected.

Choose Venice if you want museums and heritage on foot, with everything notable close to the centre, more to occupy children, and more UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach.

Scoreboard

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

CannesVenice
Beaches & swimming. Cannes leads by 4 points.4
CannesVenice
Score7369
Swim season months44
Beaches 10 km6820
Coast distance1 km4 km
Water distance1 km4 km
Places to eat. Cannes leads by 5 points.5
CannesVenice
Score5045
Restaurants within 2 km of centre473750
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1910
Museums & heritage. Venice leads by 36 points.36
CannesVenice
Score3672
Museums within 10 km3157
Museums within 2 km of centre545
Share of museums within 2 km %1679
Unesco sites within 50 km25
Nightlife. Venice leads by 7 points.7
CannesVenice
Score2835
Drinking venues within 4 km188342
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre164306
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8789
Nightclubs within 4 km193
Nature & day trips. Cannes leads by 16 points.16
CannesVenice
Score3317
Protected land share 50 km %174
Landscape blanket share 50 km %160
Land share of disc %5370
Park area within 2 km13 hectares15 hectares
Good for families. Venice leads by 32 points.32
CannesVenice
Score2557
Tourist attractions within 2 km772
Park area within 2 km13 hectares15 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km33
Sights concentration. Venice leads by 27 points.27
CannesVenice
Score5683
Notable places within 2 km95464
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Venice leads by 6 points.6
CannesVenice
Score6268
Price level global73.764.9
Daily budget€160€155
Year-round weather. Cannes leads by 8 points.8
CannesVenice
Score7466
Monthly daytime high13.3 °C to 27.9 °C8 °C to 30.4 °C
Monthly rainfall13 mm to 138 mm36 mm to 106 mm
Dry months32
0255075100

Where they differ

Cannes puts the sea 1km from the centre and has 68 beaches nearby against Venice's 20, and 17% of the land around it is protected against 4%, so days out of town are a real option. Its restaurants span a wider range of kitchens.

Venice has about twice as many museums, clustered tightly around the centre, and 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Cannes's 2. Many more notable places sit within walking distance, and many times as many attractions aimed at children.

Where they are alike

Both are genuine swimming destinations: each has four months with the sea at 21°C or more, and both peak in August, at 25°C in Cannes and 26°C in Venice.

Eating and drinking work out similarly. Venice has more restaurants near the centre, Cannes a wider spread of kitchens, and in both the places to drink cluster near the centre rather than scattering. The national price levels behind the two trips, €160 and €155 a day, are close as well.

Which traveller are you?

If you plan days around swimming and getting out of town, take Cannes: the sea is 1km from the centre, 68 beaches lie nearby, and 17% of the surrounding land is protected against 4% around Venice.

If museums and heritage set the itinerary, Venice: roughly twice as many museums, tightly grouped, and far more notable places within walking distance, so a full day needs no transport at all.

Families lean Venice, with many times as many attractions near the centre and more park space, though both have 3 theme parks within reach. Cannes answers with the shorter walk to the water.

What the numbers don't tell you

Cannes's driest months, 13-18mm in July and August, are also its warmest and its best-rated, so the beach figures and the settled weather describe the same crowded weeks; the quieter autumn brings 124-138mm in October and November.

The daily budget, €160 for Cannes's country and €155 for Venice's, is a national price level for restaurants and hotels, not a measurement of either city. A heavily visited city can sit well above its own national average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so neither number tells you what a night or a meal will cost on the ground.

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
Venice
8
10
15
19
24
28
30
30
25
19
13
8
Sea temperature, °C
Cannes
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
23
20
18
16
Venice
10
9
10
14
18
23
25
26
23
19
16
13
Rainfall, mm
Cannes
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
Venice
38
36
54
78
91
75
65
74
106
89
95
60
Daylight, hours per day
Cannes
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Venice
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cannes
5
6
7
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
5
5
Venice
3
4
5
6
7
8
10
9
6
4
3
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cannes: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (18 km from centre). Venice: 1991-2020 normals, Treviso / S. Angelo (26.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Cannes is at its best from June to September, with highs of 25-28°C, sea at 21-25°C and little rain in high summer, 13mm in July and 18mm in August. Autumn shuts that down: October and November bring 124-138mm.

Venice suits May and June, 24-28°C, though May carries 91mm. July and August reach 30°C, and September holds 25°C but is its wettest month at 106mm. Winter is dry, 36-38mm in January and February, but highs of 8-10°C.

Getting there

Flying fromCannesVenice
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 20 km
1 h 40 m
€68-109
VCE · 7 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 20 km
2 h 0 m
€46-119
1 stop
VCE · 7 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€83-135
NCE · 20 km
1 h 45 m
€41-56
VCE · 7 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
€170-248
NCE · 20 km
1 h 45 m
€190-215
1 stop
VCE · 7 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 10 m
€69-133
NCE · 20 km
1 h 10 m
€81-119
VCE · 7 km
MadridMAD
1 h 50 m
€137-165
NCE · 20 km
2 h 20 m
€102-159
VCE · 7 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 30 m
€164-246
1 stop
NCE · 20 km
1 h 20 m
€136-186
1 stop
VCE · 7 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 40 m
€175-231
NCE · 20 km
1 h 10 m
€65-121
VCE · 7 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 20 m
€375-433
NCE · 20 km
5 h 55 m
€366-421
2 stops
VCE · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€666-799
1 stop
NCE · 20 km
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 7 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

MeasureCannesVenice
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 m2 m
Main airportNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)20 km from centre129 non-stop destinationsVenice Marco Polo Airport (VCE)7 km from centre98 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCannesVenice
City population74,350250,369
People per km²3,793602
Museums within 10 km1652
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km25
Distinct cuisines in the centre3846
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 Venice 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.