VacationSelector

Lyon or Bordeaux?

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

Your match

Lyon
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on good for families and places to eat with your weighting.

Bordeaux
49
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather 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 Bordeaux if the trip is built around leaving town: 35% of the surrounding land is protected, and the countryside and UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach do the work.

Choose Lyon if you want the days to happen on foot in the city: more restaurants, more bars and more to see within walking distance of the centre, plus more park space and attractions for children.

Scoreboard

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

LyonBordeaux
Beaches & swimming. Lyon and Bordeaux are level on 0.
LyonBordeaux
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km264
Coast distance253 km18 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Lyon leads by 11 points.11
LyonBordeaux
Score7968
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,691975
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4032
Museums & heritage. Lyon and Bordeaux are level on 55.
LyonBordeaux
Score5555
Museums within 10 km5335
Museums within 2 km of centre2517
Share of museums within 2 km %4749
Unesco sites within 50 km24
Nightlife. Lyon leads by 10 points.10
LyonBordeaux
Score5848
Drinking venues within 4 km866546
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre611427
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7178
Nightclubs within 4 km4732
Nature & day trips. Bordeaux leads by 18 points.18
LyonBordeaux
Score3351
Protected land share 50 km %635
Landscape blanket share 50 km %635
Land share of disc %10085
Park area within 2 km120 hectares43 hectares
Good for families. Lyon leads by 14 points.14
LyonBordeaux
Score5945
Tourist attractions within 2 km2521
Park area within 2 km120 hectares43 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Lyon leads by 9 points.9
LyonBordeaux
Score5445
Notable places within 2 km8651
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lyon and Bordeaux are level on 62.
LyonBordeaux
Score6262
Price level global73.773.7
Daily budget€160€160
Year-round weather. Bordeaux leads by 4 points.4
LyonBordeaux
Score6468
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 28 °C10.5 °C to 27.6 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 101 mm47 mm to 114 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Bordeaux is the better base for getting out of town: 35% of the land around it is protected, against 6% around Lyon, so open country and day trips are within easy reach.

Lyon is the stronger city stay. It has about twice as many restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens, and about twice as many notable places within walking distance. For families it has three times as much park space near the centre, somewhat more attractions close by, and 2 theme parks within reach against Bordeaux's 1.

Where they are alike

Museums and heritage come out level by different routes: Lyon has about twice as many museums, while Bordeaux has 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Lyon's 2.

Neither is a swimming trip, with no month of sea at 21°C or more. Summer weather is close as well: both peak at 28°C, and neither has a month at 40mm of rain or less, so wet days are possible in either at any time of year.

Which traveller are you?

A traveller who wants to walk everywhere and eat well should take Lyon: about twice as many restaurants near the centre as Bordeaux, a wider range of kitchens, and roughly twice as many notable places within walking distance.

Families are also better served in Lyon, which has three times as much park space near the centre, somewhat more attractions close by, and 2 theme parks within reach against Bordeaux's 1.

Anyone planning to hire a car and spend days outside the city should choose Bordeaux, where 35% of the surrounding land is protected against 6% around Lyon, and 4 UNESCO-listed places sit within day-trip reach.

What the numbers don't tell you

Value comes out the same for both by construction: it reflects a national price level rather than either city, so the comparison carries no information here. The daily budget beside it is a single national estimate, not a measurement of Bordeaux or Lyon, and it says nothing about which of the two will cost you more.

Lyon has 26 beaches nearby against Bordeaux's 4, which sounds decisive until you see that neither has a month of sea at 21°C or more; the count is not a swimming season. The two are closest in summer and furthest apart in January, when Bordeaux is the milder city.

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
Lyon
7
9
14
17
21
26
28
28
23
18
11
8
Bordeaux
11
12
16
18
22
25
27
28
24
20
14
11
Rainfall, mm
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Bordeaux
87
67
63
76
71
71
47
57
81
83
114
107
Daylight, hours per day
Lyon
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Bordeaux
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
6
4
3
2
Bordeaux
3
4
6
6
7
8
8
8
7
5
3
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre). Bordeaux: 1991-2020 normals, Bordeaux / Merignac (9.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bordeaux is at its best from June to September, when highs run 25-28°C and July is the driest month of the year at 47mm. Late autumn is the weak point for a walking trip, with 114mm arriving in November.

Lyon's warmest window is July and August at 28°C, though summer rain is heavier than in Bordeaux, at 66-68mm. Its own edge is winter: February is the driest month of either city at 43mm, if you can take highs of 7-9°C.

Getting there

Flying fromLyonBordeaux
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 15 m
€114-148
BOD · 11 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 30 m
€46-73
BOD · 11 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 55 m
€105-126
LYS · 20 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
MarseilleMRS
1 h 0 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 20 m
€109-165
LYS · 20 km
1 h 50 m
€98-125
BOD · 11 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€167-217
LYS · 20 km
3 h 30 m
€237-323
BOD · 11 km
PortoOPO
2 h 5 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 20 m
€70-92
LYS · 20 km
1 h 10 m
€77-107
BOD · 11 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 35 m
€446-565
1 stop
LYS · 20 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOD · 11 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 2026-09 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

MeasureLyonBordeaux
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
Elevation160 m1 m
Main airportLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinationsBordeaux–Mérignac Airport (BOD)11 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLyonBordeaux
City population519,127267,991
People per km²10,8385,425
Museums within 10 km4218
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km24
Distinct cuisines in the centre14881

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lyon or Bordeaux 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. 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.