VacationSelector

Montpellier or San Sebastian?

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 year-round weather and good for families with your weighting.

San Sebastian
✓ Best match
51
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration 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 Montpellier if you want reliable warmth and dry summer weeks, with highs reaching 30°C, and theme parks and attractions within easy reach for children.

Choose San Sebastian if the sea decides it: beaches at the centre rather than 9km out, a denser core of museums and notable places to cover on foot, and rain you are willing to accept in every month of the year.

Scoreboard

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

MontpellierSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 23 points.23
MontpellierSan Sebastian
Score3255
Swim season months22
Beaches 10 km810
Coast distance9 km0 km
Water distance9 km0 km
Places to eat. Montpellier leads by 10 points.10
MontpellierSan Sebastian
Score6555
Restaurants within 2 km of centre737472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3426
Museums & heritage. San Sebastian leads by 13 points.13
MontpellierSan Sebastian
Score2639
Museums within 10 km1417
Museums within 2 km of centre37
Share of museums within 2 km %2141
Unesco sites within 50 km23
Nightlife. San Sebastian leads by 2 points.2
MontpellierSan Sebastian
Score3840
Drinking venues within 4 km318388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre265338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8387
Nightclubs within 4 km2512
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 13 points.13
MontpellierSan Sebastian
Score4356
Protected land share 50 km %1511
Landscape blanket share 50 km %100
Land share of disc %7052
Park area within 2 km55 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Montpellier leads by 14 points.14
MontpellierSan Sebastian
Score4430
Tourist attractions within 2 km85
Park area within 2 km55 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km71
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 16 points.16
MontpellierSan Sebastian
Score3854
Notable places within 2 km3589
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 9 points.9
MontpellierSan Sebastian
Score6271
Price level global73.760.8
Daily budget€160€122
Year-round weather. Montpellier leads by 16 points.16
MontpellierSan Sebastian
Score7458
Monthly daytime high12 °C to 29.6 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall17 mm to 93 mm92 mm to 203 mm
Dry months50
0255075100

Where they differ

Montpellier runs warmer across the year, with daytime highs of 12-30°C against San Sebastian's 11-23°C, and it gets five months at 40mm of rain or less where San Sebastian gets none, which makes outdoor plans easier to hold to.

San Sebastian puts the sea at the centre, 0km away rather than 9km from Montpellier's. Its core is denser too: roughly three times as many notable places within walking distance, and its museums sit tightly around those same central streets.

Where they are alike

Nights out land in much the same place. Both keep their drinking venues close to the centre, so an evening is walkable in either; San Sebastian has somewhat more bars, Montpellier about twice as many nightclubs.

Eating and cost sit close as well. Both cities concentrate their restaurants near the centre, Montpellier with about twice as many and a wider spread of kitchens, and the national price levels behind them are not far apart.

Which traveller are you?

Travelling with children: Montpellier. It has more tourist attractions near the centre and 7 theme parks within reach against San Sebastian's 1, plus warmer, drier summer days. San Sebastian offers more park space near its centre.

Swimmers: San Sebastian. The sea begins at the centre rather than 9km out, with more beaches close by, and the water reaches 22°C in August, as it does at Montpellier's coast.

Museum-goers and walkers: San Sebastian. More to reach on foot from the centre, somewhat more museums grouped near it, and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 2.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €160 for France and €122 for Spain, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels, not measurements of either city. A heavily visited city can sit well above its own country's average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so treat them as background rather than as a verdict on what a week will cost.

San Sebastian's coastal edge is narrower than it looks: the sea reaches 21°C or more in the same brief window as Montpellier's, and every month carries heavy rain. Montpellier's warmest, driest weeks are also its busiest, and its beaches are a 9km trip.

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
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Montpellier
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Montpellier
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
10
8
6
5
5
San Sebastian
3
4
5
5
7
6
7
6
6
5
3
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Montpellier's window runs May to September, with highs of 23-30°C and a genuinely dry peak, July bringing just 17mm. The catch arrives later, when September and October both run near 90mm.

San Sebastian is at its best in July and August, with highs of 22-23°C and the sea as warm as Montpellier's. Rain never really stops, though: even those two months bring 92-109mm, and November is the wettest at 203mm, so the shoulder season stays damp.

Getting there

Flying fromMontpellierSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
MunichMUC
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 109 km
1 h 30 m
€129-223
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
BastiaBIA
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
BIQ · 40 km
AjaccioAJA
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
PUF · 126 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 40 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 75 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

MeasureMontpellierSan Sebastian
Official languageFrenchSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation7 m6 m
Main airportMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMontpellierSan Sebastian
City population310,240189,866
People per km²5,4523,118
Museums within 10 km1414
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km23
Distinct cuisines in the centre6545
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months2 months

Where else could you go?

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