VacationSelector

Geneva or Montpellier?

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

Your match

Geneva
✓ Best match
50
match

Wins on museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.

Montpellier
47
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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 Geneva if your trip is about museums, walkable sightseeing and getting out into protected countryside; attractions and park space for children sit close to the centre, and June to August is the window.

Choose Montpellier if you want warmth, sea swimming and a drier midsummer, with a usable season stretching from May to September and theme parks within reach. It has far less to see indoors.

Scoreboard

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

GenevaMontpellier
Beaches & swimming. Montpellier leads by 32 points.32
GenevaMontpellier
Score032
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km438
Coast distance279 km9 km
Water distance—9 km
Places to eat. Geneva leads by 5 points.5
GenevaMontpellier
Score7065
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,028737
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3534
Museums & heritage. Geneva leads by 26 points.26
GenevaMontpellier
Score5226
Museums within 10 km3514
Museums within 2 km of centre203
Share of museums within 2 km %5721
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Geneva leads by 12 points.12
GenevaMontpellier
Score5038
Drinking venues within 4 km549318
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre427265
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7883
Nightclubs within 4 km6025
Nature & day trips. Geneva leads by 16 points.16
GenevaMontpellier
Score5943
Protected land share 50 km %2715
Landscape blanket share 50 km %2110
Land share of disc %10070
Park area within 2 km182 hectares55 hectares
Good for families. Geneva leads by 21 points.21
GenevaMontpellier
Score6544
Tourist attractions within 2 km288
Park area within 2 km182 hectares55 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km27
Sights concentration. Geneva leads by 18 points.18
GenevaMontpellier
Score5638
Notable places within 2 km9935
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Montpellier leads by 27 points.27
GenevaMontpellier
Score3562
Price level global110.573.7
Daily budget€248€160
Year-round weather. Montpellier leads by 15 points.15
GenevaMontpellier
Score5974
Monthly daytime high5.1 °C to 26.8 °C12 °C to 29.6 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 94 mm17 mm to 93 mm
Dry months05
0255075100

Where they differ

Geneva has about three times as many museums as Montpellier, clustered tightly around the centre, plus about three times as many notable places within walking distance. Its surroundings are greener: 27% of nearby land is protected against 15% around Montpellier.

Montpellier is warmer and drier, with daytime highs of 12-30°C across the year against Geneva's 5-27°C, and months of 40mm of rain or less that Geneva never gets. It adds sea swimming, up to 22°C in August, and more theme parks within reach.

Where they are alike

Eating out is where the two are most alike. Both offer a similar range of kitchens, with restaurants concentrated near the centre; Geneva has somewhat more of them, but neither is short of choice.

Nightlife follows the same pattern: bars and clubs sit mostly near the centre in both, so an evening out stays walkable. The two also share a shape to the year, warmest in July at 27°C in Geneva and 30°C in Montpellier, coolest in January.

Which traveller are you?

A traveller who wants museums and heritage on foot should take Geneva: about three times as many museums as Montpellier, clustered near the centre alongside most of its notable places, so days need little planning.

Families split. Geneva has the park space and the attractions near the centre; Montpellier has more theme parks within reach and a sea at 21-22°C in high summer, which decides it if the children swim.

For evenings out, Geneva has about twice as many bars and clubs as Montpellier, most of them near the centre. Montpellier's advantage is the weather to sit outside, with October still at 21°C.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget is a national estimate of restaurant and hotel price levels, €248 for Switzerland and €160 for France, not a measurement of either city. A heavily visited city can sit well away from its country's average, by more than the gap between these two figures, so read it as a country signal only.

Beach counts mislead here. Geneva has 43 beaches nearby, but no month with water recorded at 21°C or more, so they suit walking more than swimming. Montpellier's warmest months are also its driest and busiest, and its autumn is wet.

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
Geneva
5
7
12
16
20
24
27
26
21
16
9
6
Montpellier
12
13
16
19
23
27
30
29
25
21
16
13
Sea temperature, °C
Geneva
No coastline within reach
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Geneva
71
55
61
66
77
81
77
80
87
94
87
88
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
Daylight, hours per day
Geneva
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Montpellier
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Geneva
2
3
6
6
7
8
9
8
6
4
2
2
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. Geneva: 1991-2020 normals, Geneve-Cointrin (5.7 km from centre). Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Geneva is at its best from June to August, when highs run 24-27°C. Rain is steady all year, 55-94mm a month, so the warm months are not the dry ones, and winter highs near 5°C make the turn of the year the weakest stretch.

Montpellier holds up longer. May to September brings 23-30°C, and midsummer is the driest part of its year, down to 17mm, with the sea at 21-22°C. Autumn turns wet, up to 93mm, and even midwinter reaches 12°C.

Getting there

Flying fromGenevaMontpellier
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€104-203
GVA · 5 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€91-200
GVA · 5 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 25 m
€156-181
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 109 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MadridMAD
1 h 50 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
BastiaBIA
1 h 15 m
no fares
LYS · 97 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 10 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
AjaccioAJA
1 h 15 m
no fares
LYS · 97 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
TunisTUN
2 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 35 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
7 h 45 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

MeasureGenevaMontpellier
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshFrench
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation403 m7 m
Main airportGeneva International Airport (GVA)5 km from centre140 non-stop destinationsMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureGenevaMontpellier
City population209,061310,240
People per km²13,1485,452
Museums within 10 km3514
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre8065
Swim season, months above 21 °C–2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Geneva 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.