VacationSelector

Monaco or Montpellier?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Monaco
48
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

Montpellier
47
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat 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 Monaco if swimming drives the trip: the sea starts at the centre, 50 beaches lie close by, the warm-sea season runs longer, and the main sights sit within a short walk.

Choose Montpellier if eating out and evenings matter more: many more restaurants and a wider range of kitchens near the centre, far more bars and clubs, and more parkland for slow days.

Scoreboard

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

MonacoMontpellier
Beaches & swimming. Monaco leads by 41 points.41
MonacoMontpellier
Score7332
Swim season months42
Beaches 10 km508
Coast distance0 km9 km
Water distance0 km9 km
Places to eat. Montpellier leads by 26 points.26
MonacoMontpellier
Score3965
Restaurants within 2 km of centre269737
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1634
Museums & heritage. Monaco leads by 12 points.12
MonacoMontpellier
Score3826
Museums within 10 km2314
Museums within 2 km of centre83
Share of museums within 2 km %3521
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Montpellier leads by 30 points.30
MonacoMontpellier
Score838
Drinking venues within 4 km69318
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre63265
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %9183
Nightclubs within 4 km725
Nature & day trips. Monaco leads by 10 points.10
MonacoMontpellier
Score5343
Protected land share 50 km %2415
Landscape blanket share 50 km %1710
Land share of disc %5470
Park area within 2 km15 hectares55 hectares
Good for families. Montpellier leads by 9 points.9
MonacoMontpellier
Score3544
Tourist attractions within 2 km148
Park area within 2 km15 hectares55 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km37
Sights concentration. Monaco leads by 26 points.26
MonacoMontpellier
Score6438
Notable places within 2 km15435
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for moneyNo source publishes a price level for Monaco.
Year-round weather. Monaco and Montpellier are level on 74.
MonacoMontpellier
Score7474
Monthly daytime high13.3 °C to 27.9 °C12 °C to 29.6 °C
Monthly rainfall13 mm to 138 mm17 mm to 93 mm
Dry months35
0255075100

Where they differ

Monaco puts the water at the door: the sea is 0km from the centre against Montpellier's 9km, with 50 beaches nearby against 8, and it stays at 21°C or warmer for twice as many months. Its notable places also cluster far more tightly within walking distance.

Montpellier has roughly three times as many restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens, plus far more bars and many more nightclubs, most of them central.

Where they are alike

Both are steady through the year: Monaco runs 13-28°C, Montpellier 12-30°C, with similar sunshine totals, so no season closes down and winters stay mild.

Nature and families are close too. Protected land surrounds both, 24% of the land around Monaco and 15% around Montpellier, and each has theme parks within day-trip reach, Monaco leaning on attractions near the centre, Montpellier on parkland.

Which traveller are you?

If swimming is the point of the trip, take Monaco. The sea begins at the centre, 50 beaches sit within reach, and it stays at 21°C or warmer for twice as long as Montpellier's.

If you travel for food and evenings out, Montpellier. Roughly three times as many restaurants near the centre, a wider spread of kitchens, and far more bars and clubs, most of them walkable.

For a short break on foot, Monaco again: its notable places pack tightly around the centre and it has about twice as many museums. Families may prefer Montpellier, with more parkland and 7 theme parks within reach against 3.

What the numbers don't tell you

No cost comparison is possible here. The data carries a daily budget for Montpellier, about €160, but none of any kind for Monaco, so nothing in these figures says which trip costs more, and the value axis cannot be read as a judgement on Monaco.

Monaco's beach and sights advantages rest on a very small place: 50 beaches and a tight cluster of attractions belong to a town of under 40,000 residents, and the months that suit swimming are the ones everyone else picks. The quieter autumn alternative brings 124-138mm of rain, so moving the dates costs you the weather.

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
Monaco
13
14
15
17
21
25
28
28
25
21
17
14
Montpellier
12
13
16
19
23
27
30
29
25
21
16
13
Sea temperature, °C
Monaco
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
22
20
17
15
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Monaco
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
Daylight, hours per day
Monaco
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Montpellier
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Monaco
5
6
7
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
5
5
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. Monaco: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (19.9 km from centre). Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Monaco is at its best in July and August, with highs of 28°C, sea at 24-25°C and only 13-18mm of rain. Autumn rainfall roughly doubles Montpellier's, so a late-season swimming trip is a gamble.

Montpellier holds up better either side of summer: 23-27°C in May and June with 33-46mm of rain, and drier September and October than Monaco. Its sea stays cooler all summer, so swimming is the weaker reason to come.

Getting there

Flying fromMonacoMontpellier
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 18 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 18 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 25 m
no fares
NCE · 18 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
TunisTUN
1 h 35 m
€148-281
NCE · 18 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MadridMAD
1 h 50 m
€137-165
NCE · 18 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 25 m
€153-221
1 stop
NCE · 18 km
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 109 km
BastiaBIA
55 m
no fares
NCE · 18 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
AjaccioAJA
55 m
no fares
NCE · 18 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
NantesNTE
1 h 35 m
€129-163
NCE · 18 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 55 m
no fares
NCE · 18 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

MeasureMonacoMontpellier
Official languageFrenchFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCEF230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation68 m7 m
Main airportNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)18 km from centre129 non-stop destinationsMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMonacoMontpellier
City population38,857310,240
People per km²18,5035,452
Museums within 10 km1414
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre2965
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Monaco 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). 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). Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under 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. 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.