VacationSelector

Nice or Montpellier?

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

Your match

Nice
✓ Best match
56
match

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

Montpellier
47
match

Wins on good for families 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 are travelling with children and want attractions and theme parks close at hand, and if you prefer warmer, drier days across the year, accepting a 9km trip to reach the sea.

Choose Nice if swimming matters most: the beach is 1km from the centre, and it comes with more museums and more protected land within day-trip reach.

Scoreboard

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

NiceMontpellier
Beaches & swimming. Nice leads by 41 points.41
NiceMontpellier
Score7332
Swim season months42
Beaches 10 km708
Coast distance1 km9 km
Water distance1 km9 km
Places to eat. Nice leads by 4 points.4
NiceMontpellier
Score6965
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,231737
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2834
Museums & heritage. Nice leads by 20 points.20
NiceMontpellier
Score4626
Museums within 10 km2714
Museums within 2 km of centre143
Share of museums within 2 km %5221
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Nice leads by 6 points.6
NiceMontpellier
Score4438
Drinking venues within 4 km428318
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre388265
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %9183
Nightclubs within 4 km2625
Nature & day trips. Nice leads by 14 points.14
NiceMontpellier
Score5743
Protected land share 50 km %2415
Landscape blanket share 50 km %2010
Land share of disc %6270
Park area within 2 km56 hectares55 hectares
Good for families. Montpellier leads by 14 points.14
NiceMontpellier
Score3044
Tourist attractions within 2 km48
Park area within 2 km56 hectares55 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km37
Sights concentration. Nice leads by 9 points.9
NiceMontpellier
Score4738
Notable places within 2 km6035
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Nice and Montpellier are level on 62.
NiceMontpellier
Score6262
Price level global73.773.7
Daily budget€160€160
Year-round weather. Nice and Montpellier are level on 74.
NiceMontpellier
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

Montpellier suits families better: about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre, and 7 theme parks within reach against Nice's 3, with comparable park space close in.

Nice is for swimming and sightseeing. The sea is 1km from its centre against 9km, with 70 beaches nearby against 8 and twice as many months of comfortably warm water. It also has about twice as many museums, tightly grouped, and about twice as many notable places within walking distance.

Where they are alike

Weather is where the two are closest. Both get around 2700 hours of sunshine a year, both are coolest in January at 12-13°C, and both are workable from spring through autumn without extreme summer heat.

Eating and nights out are close too. Nice has more restaurants near the centre, Montpellier a wider range of kitchens, so neither leaves you short. Both have a similar number of nightclubs, and in both the drinking is concentrated near the centre.

Which traveller are you?

Travelling with children: Montpellier. More tourist attractions sit within reach of the centre than in Nice, there are 7 theme parks against 3, and park space close in is similar in both.

Beach holiday: Nice. The sea is 1km from the centre, 70 beaches lie close by, the water reaches 25°C in August, and more months have water warm enough to swim in than at Montpellier.

Museums and walking: Nice again. It has about twice as many museums as Montpellier and more notable places within walking distance, grouped tightly enough to cover a lot on foot in a couple of days.

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, and the €160 daily budget beside it is one national estimate rather than a measurement of either city. What you actually pay will vary by district and season more than that figure suggests.

Nice's beach advantage arrives exactly when everyone else does: the warmest sea, 25°C, falls in August, its busiest month. Its autumn looks mild on temperature alone, but 124mm of rain falls in October and more in November, so a quieter shoulder trip can be a wet one.

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
Nice
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
Nice
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
Nice
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
Nice
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
Nice
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. Nice: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (8 km from centre). Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Montpellier is the stronger spring choice: highs climb from 19°C in April to 23°C in May, and rain eases to 46mm in May and 33mm in June, before July peaks at 30°C. Autumn stays drier too, 93mm in October against Nice's 124mm.

Nice comes into its own in high summer, holding 28°C through July and August with sea at 24-25°C and just 13-18mm of rain. Its autumn is the wetter of the two, with 138mm in November.

Getting there

Flying fromNiceMontpellier
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 6 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 6 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 25 m
no fares
NCE · 6 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
BastiaBIA
55 m
no fares
NCE · 6 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
AjaccioAJA
55 m
no fares
NCE · 6 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
TunisTUN
1 h 35 m
€148-281
NCE · 6 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MadridMAD
1 h 50 m
€137-165
NCE · 6 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MunichMUC
1 h 25 m
€198-243
1 stop
NCE · 6 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 25 m
€153-221
1 stop
NCE · 6 km
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 109 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 55 m
no fares
NCE · 6 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

MeasureNiceMontpellier
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
Elevation0 m7 m
Main airportNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)6 km from centre129 non-stop destinationsMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureNiceMontpellier
City population357,737310,240
People per km²4,9755,452
Museums within 10 km1614
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre6565
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 Nice 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. 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.