Paris or Montreal?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration with your weighting.
Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.
What matters to you?
Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.
The verdict
Choose Montreal if you are going in high summer and want warmth and open space: July highs of 27°C, more park land near the centre than Paris, and 7 beaches within reach.
Choose Paris if you want museums, sights within walking distance and a wide choice of bars and clubs, or if you are travelling outside summer, when it stays milder.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Paris and Montreal are level on 0.
| Paris | Montreal | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 0 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 2 | 7 |
| Coast distance | 149 km | 276 km |
| Water distance | — | — |
Places to eat. Paris leads by 16 points.16
| Paris | Montreal | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 90 | 74 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 4,732 | 1,016 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 33 | 49 |
Museums & heritage. Paris leads by 39 points.39
| Paris | Montreal | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 76 | 37 |
| Museums within 10 km | 185 | 39 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 65 | 19 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 35 | 49 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 4 | 0 |
Nightlife. Paris leads by 26 points.26
| Paris | Montreal | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 88 | 62 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 3,796 | 1,012 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 1,694 | 493 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 45 | 49 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 201 | 74 |
Nature & day trips. Paris leads by 12 points.12
| Paris | Montreal | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 48 | 36 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 28 | 2 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 26 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 100 |
| Park area within 2 km | 82 hectares | 189 hectares |
Good for families. Paris leads by 25 points.25
| Paris | Montreal | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 75 | 50 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 89 | 11 |
| Park area within 2 km | 82 hectares | 189 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 3 | 1 |
Sights concentration. Paris leads by 38 points.38
| Paris | Montreal | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 94 | 56 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 865 | 98 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Paris leads by 8 points.8
| Paris | Montreal | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 62 | 54 |
| Price level global | 73.7 | 84 |
| Daily budget | €160 | — |
Year-round weather. Paris leads by 16 points.16
| Paris | Montreal | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 66 | 50 |
| Monthly daytime high | 7.8 °C to 26 °C | -3.5 °C to 26.5 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 38 mm to 75 mm | 69 mm to 121 mm |
| Dry months | 1 | 0 |
Where they differ
Montreal has about twice as much park space near the centre as Paris, 7 beaches nearby against Paris's 2, and a somewhat wider range of kitchens across its restaurants. Its summers are hotter too, reaching 27°C.
Paris holds many times as many museums, and 4 UNESCO-listed places sit within day-trip reach where Montreal has none. Notable buildings cluster far more densely within walking distance of the centre, and there are about three times as many bars and nightclubs, roughly half of them central.
Where they are alike
Neither city is a place to swim. Sea temperature reaches 21°C in no month at either, so Montreal's 7 beaches and Paris's 2 are a side note rather than a reason to book.
Both treat eating out as a main activity, with plenty of restaurants near the centre. Both also keep nature at arm's length rather than at the heart of the trip: parkland within the city, and countryside reached as a day trip.
Which traveller are you?
Museum and city-walking traveller: Paris, without argument. Many times as many museums, 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and a centre where notable buildings sit close enough together to cover on foot.
Families: Paris again, for the sheer volume of attractions near the centre and 3 theme parks within reach against Montreal's 1, though Montreal answers with about twice as much park space close to town.
Summer traveller after warmth and open air: Montreal, where July reaches 27°C and 7 beaches lie within reach, provided you accept a thinner concentration of sights and fewer places to drink.
What the numbers don't tell you
No cost comparison is possible here. The dataset carries a daily budget for Paris, about €160, and none at all for Montreal, so nothing in these figures tells you which trip costs more. The value ratings rest on a different measure that both cities do have, and should not be read as a price ranking.
The sunshine figure is missing for Paris; no nearby station records it, so that side of the weather comparison is unmeasured, and Paris's monthly ratings rest on temperature and rainfall alone. Note too that Montreal's warmest months are also among its wettest, at up to 109mm.
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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Paris: 1991-2020 normals, Paris-Montsouris (4.6 km from centre). Montreal: 1991-2020 normals, Montreal McTavish (3.2 km from centre).
Montreal is worth the trip from June to September, when highs run 24-27°C. Rain is steady rather than seasonal, 88-109mm through those months, so warm days come with showers. From November to March it is a different city, with January highs of -3°C.
Paris works over a longer stretch, April to October, with highs of 17-26°C, and it is the drier of the two, with one month down at 38mm. Even December holds 8°C, so a winter visit is workable.
Getting there
| Flying from | Paris | Montreal |
|---|---|---|
| New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA | 7 h 30 m €579-648 1 stop CDG · 22 km | 1 h 20 m €231-372 1 stop YUL · 16 km |
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 1 h 5 m €63-103 CDG · 22 km | 6 h 50 m €447-599 1 stop YUL · 16 km |
| QuebecYQB | 6 h 55 m no fares CDG · 22 km | 55 m no fares YUL · 16 km |
| TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ | 7 h 45 m €445-510 1 stop CDG · 22 km | 1 h 15 m €133-276 YUL · 16 km |
| LisbonLIS | 2 h 20 m €138-242 ORY · 14 km | 6 h 50 m no fares YUL · 16 km |
| MadridMAD | 1 h 55 m €107-141 ORY · 14 km | 7 h 10 m no fares YUL · 16 km |
| BarcelonaBCN | 1 h 40 m €110-135 CDG · 22 km | 7 h 35 m no fares YUL · 16 km |
| CasablancaCMN | 2 h 55 m €166-350 ORY · 14 km | 7 h 20 m no fares YUL · 16 km |
| Pointe-a-pitrePTP | 8 h 35 m no fares ORY · 14 km | 4 h 45 m no fares YUL · 16 km |
| SeoulICN, GMP | 11 h 10 m €509-719 1 stop CDG · 22 km | 13 h 5 m no fares YUL · 16 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
| Measure | Paris | Montreal |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | French | French, English |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) | Canadian Dollar (CAD) |
| Sockets | CE230 V, 50 Hz | AB120 V, 60 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer | UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 911 |
| Elevation | 27 m | 31 m |
| Main airport | Charles de Gaulle International Airport (CDG)22 km from centre277 non-stop destinations | Montreal / Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (YUL)16 km from centre164 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 11 days | 10 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Paris | Montreal |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 2,103,778 | 1,895,211 |
| People per km² | 19,960 | 3,806 |
| Museums within 10 km | 251 | 37 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 4 | 0 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 169 | 97 |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Paris or Montreal somewhere new.