VacationSelector

Lyon or Montpellier?

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 museums & heritage and nightlife with your weighting.

Montpellier
47
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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 Lyon if the trip is about eating out, museums and late nights: more restaurants near the centre, many more museums, and considerably more bars and clubs, most of them within walking distance of each other.

Choose Montpellier if you want warmth and sea swimming, with water at 21-22°C in July and August, milder winters and a drier summer.

Scoreboard

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

LyonMontpellier
Beaches & swimming. Montpellier leads by 32 points.32
LyonMontpellier
Score032
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km268
Coast distance253 km9 km
Water distance—9 km
Places to eat. Lyon leads by 14 points.14
LyonMontpellier
Score7965
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,691737
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4034
Museums & heritage. Lyon leads by 29 points.29
LyonMontpellier
Score5526
Museums within 10 km5314
Museums within 2 km of centre253
Share of museums within 2 km %4721
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Lyon leads by 20 points.20
LyonMontpellier
Score5838
Drinking venues within 4 km866318
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre611265
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7183
Nightclubs within 4 km4725
Nature & day trips. Montpellier leads by 10 points.10
LyonMontpellier
Score3343
Protected land share 50 km %615
Landscape blanket share 50 km %610
Land share of disc %10070
Park area within 2 km120 hectares55 hectares
Good for families. Lyon leads by 15 points.15
LyonMontpellier
Score5944
Tourist attractions within 2 km258
Park area within 2 km120 hectares55 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km27
Sights concentration. Lyon leads by 16 points.16
LyonMontpellier
Score5438
Notable places within 2 km8635
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lyon and Montpellier are level on 62.
LyonMontpellier
Score6262
Price level global73.773.7
Daily budget€160€160
Year-round weather. Montpellier leads by 10 points.10
LyonMontpellier
Score6474
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 28 °C12 °C to 29.6 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 101 mm17 mm to 93 mm
Dry months05
0255075100

Where they differ

Lyon is the stronger city for indoor culture and for evenings: about three times as many museums as Montpellier, clustered tightly around the centre, and more notable places within walking distance. It also has far more bars and about twice as many nightclubs, most of them near the centre.

Montpellier is the one with usable swimming. Lyon lists more beaches nearby, 26 against 8, but its water never reaches 21°C; Montpellier's sea sits at 21-22°C in July and August.

Where they are alike

Summer looks much the same in both. July is the warmest month in each, at 28°C in Lyon and 30°C in Montpellier, and January the coolest, so anyone travelling for warm, long days will find it in either.

Beyond that, both have real countryside within a day's drive and two UNESCO-listed places in reach, both keep parks near the centre, and in both, eating out is a real part of the trip rather than an afterthought.

Which traveller are you?

A traveller who plans a trip around restaurants, museums and evenings out should go to Lyon. Its centre holds most of the eating, drinking and sightseeing within walking distance, so days need little planning and no car.

Families are split. Lyon has more attractions and more park space near the centre, so it works for younger children on foot; Montpellier has 7 theme parks within reach against Lyon's 2, plus swimming from July to September.

Anyone who wants to be outdoors most days should choose Montpellier: 15% of the surrounding land is protected against 6% around Lyon, and the drier summer makes walking plans more reliable.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value comparison between these two carries no information: it is a national price level, identical for both by construction, so it cannot tell you which city costs more. The €160 daily budget beside it is one national estimate rather than a measurement of either place.

Montpellier's swimming advantage is narrow in time: the sea only passes 21°C in July and August, the same weeks the coast is busiest, and by September and October rainfall climbs to 88-93mm. Lyon's beach count is larger but none of it is warm sea, so read that figure as access to water rather than a swimming season.

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
Montpellier
12
13
16
19
23
27
30
29
25
21
16
13
Sea temperature, °C
Lyon
No coastline within reach
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
Daylight, hours per day
Lyon
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
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
6
4
3
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. Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre). Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Lyon is at its best from June to September, with highs of 26-28°C and summer rain of 66-73mm. It falls away quickly after that: October brings 101mm and highs of 18°C, and January sits at 7°C.

Montpellier holds a longer season, from May through September, and its summer is drier: 17mm in July with highs of 30°C, and sea at 21-22°C in July and August. Winter stays milder at 12-13°C, though October is wet at 93mm.

Getting there

Flying fromLyonMontpellier
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 15 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
TunisTUN
1 h 55 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MadridMAD
1 h 45 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 20 m
€109-165
LYS · 20 km
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 109 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 20 m
€195-211
2 stops
LYS · 20 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
BastiaBIA
1 h 15 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
NantesNTE
1 h 20 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 35 m
€446-565
1 stop
LYS · 20 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 2026-09 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

MeasureLyonMontpellier
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 m7 m
Main airportLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinationsMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLyonMontpellier
City population519,127310,240
People per km²10,8385,452
Museums within 10 km4214
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre14865
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 Lyon 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. 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. 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. 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.