VacationSelector

Montpellier or Strasbourg?

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, level with your weighting

Montpellier
47
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Strasbourg
47
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

The verdict

Choose Montpellier if you want warmth and water: highs of 30°C in July, a sea warm enough to swim in by late summer, and theme parks to fill days with children.

Choose Strasbourg if you would rather walk: museums and notable buildings packed tightly around the centre, and more protected countryside on the doorstep when you want a day out of town.

Scoreboard

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

MontpellierStrasbourg
Beaches & swimming. Montpellier leads by 32 points.32
MontpellierStrasbourg
Score320
Swim season months20
Beaches 10 km89
Coast distance9 km398 km
Water distance9 km—
Places to eat. Strasbourg leads by 2 points.2
MontpellierStrasbourg
Score6567
Restaurants within 2 km of centre737780
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3436
Museums & heritage. Strasbourg leads by 15 points.15
MontpellierStrasbourg
Score2641
Museums within 10 km1423
Museums within 2 km of centre314
Share of museums within 2 km %2161
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Montpellier leads by 2 points.2
MontpellierStrasbourg
Score3836
Drinking venues within 4 km318305
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre265264
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8387
Nightclubs within 4 km2517
Nature & day trips. Strasbourg leads by 11 points.11
MontpellierStrasbourg
Score4354
Protected land share 50 km %1537
Landscape blanket share 50 km %1035
Land share of disc %70100
Park area within 2 km55 hectares71 hectares
Good for families. Montpellier leads by 6 points.6
MontpellierStrasbourg
Score4438
Tourist attractions within 2 km89
Park area within 2 km55 hectares71 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km71
Sights concentration. Strasbourg leads by 20 points.20
MontpellierStrasbourg
Score3858
Notable places within 2 km35109
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Montpellier and Strasbourg are level on 62.
MontpellierStrasbourg
Score6262
Price level global73.773.7
Daily budget€160€160
Year-round weather. Montpellier leads by 11 points.11
MontpellierStrasbourg
Score7463
Monthly daytime high12 °C to 29.6 °C5.2 °C to 26.4 °C
Monthly rainfall17 mm to 93 mm34 mm to 77 mm
Dry months53
0255075100

Where they differ

Montpellier is the one where you can swim: the sea reaches 22°C in August, and there are 7 theme parks within reach against Strasbourg's 1, which counts if you travel with children.

Strasbourg is the more concentrated city, with about three times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre and roughly twice as many museums, clustered close in. It is also better placed for days out: 37% of the surrounding land is protected against 15% around Montpellier, with more park space near the centre.

Where they are alike

Eating out is close to a draw. The two have a similar number of restaurants near the centre and a similar range of kitchens, so neither gives you noticeably more choice at dinner.

Nights out are much the same as well, with a comparable number of places to drink in both, mostly near the centre, and Montpellier slightly ahead on nightclubs. For families, both hold a similar count of attractions close to the centre.

Which traveller are you?

Travelling with children: Montpellier. Beaches are within reach, the sea gets to 22°C in August, and 7 theme parks against Strasbourg's 1 make the long summer easier to fill.

Wanting museums and old streets on foot: Strasbourg. Roughly twice as many museums, and about three times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, so a weekend needs little transport.

Walkers and day-trippers: Strasbourg again. 37% of the land around it is protected against 15% around Montpellier, and there is more park space close to the centre for shorter outings.

What the numbers don't tell you

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

The beach counts mislead too. Strasbourg is credited with 9 beaches nearby yet has no sea temperature at all, so what really separates the two is Montpellier's warm coast in late summer, and those are also the months when that coast is at its busiest.

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
Strasbourg
5
7
12
17
21
24
26
26
22
16
9
6
Sea temperature, °C
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
Strasbourg
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
Strasbourg
35
34
39
42
77
68
72
61
55
59
47
45
Daylight, hours per day
Montpellier
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Strasbourg
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Montpellier
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
10
8
6
5
5
Strasbourg
2
3
5
6
7
7
8
7
6
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre). Strasbourg: 1991-2020 normals, Strasbourg (9.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Montpellier's season is long. May to September all work, July is the driest at 17mm with highs of 30°C, and the sea is warm enough to swim in by August. Then the rain arrives, peaking at 93mm in October, though the air stays mild.

Strasbourg is narrower. August is the pick, with highs of 26°C and less rain than early summer, which is its wettest stretch at 68-77mm. Winter days reach only 5°C.

Getting there

Flying fromMontpellierStrasbourg
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
STR · 109 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
SXB · 10 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
FKB · 33 km
BastiaBIA
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
SXB · 10 km
TunisTUN
1 h 40 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
SXB · 10 km
AjaccioAJA
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
SXB · 10 km
NantesNTE
1 h 20 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
SXB · 10 km
MadridMAD
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
BSL · 110 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
ZRH · 137 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 137 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.

Before you go

MeasureMontpellierStrasbourg
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
Elevation7 m132 m
Main airportMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsStrasbourg Airport (SXB)10 km from centre42 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMontpellierStrasbourg
City population310,240293,771
People per km²5,4523,752
Museums within 10 km1421
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre6587
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months–

Where else could you go?

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