VacationSelector

Montpellier or Palermo?

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

Your match

Montpellier
47
match

Wins on places to eat and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Palermo
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

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

MontpellierPalermo
Beaches & swimming. Palermo leads by 35 points.35
MontpellierPalermo
Score3267
Swim season months25
Beaches 10 km813
Coast distance9 km1 km
Water distance9 km1 km
Places to eat. Montpellier leads by 15 points.15
MontpellierPalermo
Score6550
Restaurants within 2 km of centre737807
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3413
Museums & heritage. Palermo leads by 24 points.24
MontpellierPalermo
Score2650
Museums within 10 km1432
Museums within 2 km of centre326
Share of museums within 2 km %2181
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Palermo leads by 15 points.15
MontpellierPalermo
Score3853
Drinking venues within 4 km318799
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre265515
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8364
Nightclubs within 4 km2516
Nature & day trips. Montpellier leads by 7 points.7
MontpellierPalermo
Score4336
Protected land share 50 km %154
Landscape blanket share 50 km %100
Land share of disc %7045
Park area within 2 km55 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Montpellier leads by 3 points.3
MontpellierPalermo
Score4441
Tourist attractions within 2 km816
Park area within 2 km55 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km70
Sights concentration. Palermo leads by 19 points.19
MontpellierPalermo
Score3857
Notable places within 2 km35104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Palermo leads by 6 points.6
MontpellierPalermo
Score6268
Price level global73.764.9
Daily budget€160€155
Year-round weather. Palermo leads by 3 points.3
MontpellierPalermo
Score7477
Monthly daytime high12 °C to 29.6 °C12.6 °C to 27.8 °C
Monthly rainfall17 mm to 93 mm4 mm to 71 mm
Dry months57
0255075100

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
Montpellier
12
13
16
19
23
27
30
29
25
21
16
13
Palermo
13
13
14
16
20
24
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
Palermo
15
14
15
16
19
22
26
27
25
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
Palermo
48
45
35
35
18
9
4
11
37
67
71
69
Daylight, hours per day
Montpellier
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Palermo
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Montpellier
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
10
8
6
5
5
Palermo
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
8
7
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre). Palermo: 1961-1990 normals, Ustica (66.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMontpellierPalermo
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
1 h 45 m
€31-110
PMO · 25 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 30 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
1 h 10 m
€40-52
PMO · 25 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
2 h 25 m
€101-135
PMO · 25 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
MadridMAD
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
2 h 25 m
€92-140
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
MunichMUC
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
2 h 0 m
€175-215
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
TunisTUN
1 h 40 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
2 h 15 m
€101-154
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 109 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
PMO · 25 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

MeasureMontpellierPalermo
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
Elevation7 m14 m
Main airportMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsFalcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMontpellierPalermo
City population310,240630,167
People per km²5,4523,924
Museums within 10 km1442
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre6533
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Montpellier or Palermo 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.