Pisa or Sorrento?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on good for families and sights concentration with your weighting.
Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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 Pisa if you want the town itself to be the trip: museums, attractions, parks and places to eat grouped close together, and enough for children to do that a wet afternoon is not a problem.
Choose Sorrento if swimming decides it. The sea is at the centre rather than 10km out, the beaches are counted in dozens, and high summer is drier there.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Sorrento leads by 56 points.56
| Pisa | Sorrento | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 21 | 77 |
| Swim season months | 4 | 5 |
| Beaches 10 km | 1 | 78 |
| Coast distance | 10 km | 0 km |
| Water distance | 10 km | 0 km |
Places to eat. Pisa leads by 15 points.15
| Pisa | Sorrento | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 34 | 19 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 379 | 249 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 9 | 5 |
Museums & heritage. Pisa leads by 18 points.18
| Pisa | Sorrento | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 55 | 37 |
| Museums within 10 km | 27 | 7 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 22 | 4 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 81 | 57 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 3 | 5 |
Nightlife. Pisa leads by 6 points.6
| Pisa | Sorrento | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 28 | 22 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 232 | 179 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 203 | 131 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 88 | 73 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 3 | 2 |
Nature & day trips. Pisa leads by 16 points.16
| Pisa | Sorrento | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 39 | 23 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 9 | 7 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 65 | 42 |
| Park area within 2 km | 40 hectares | 4 hectares |
Good for families. Pisa leads by 42 points.42
| Pisa | Sorrento | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 47 | 5 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 20 | 2 |
| Park area within 2 km | 40 hectares | 4 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 2 | 1 |
Sights concentration. Pisa leads by 37 points.37
| Pisa | Sorrento | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 47 | 10 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 58 | 7 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Pisa and Sorrento are level on 68.
| Pisa | Sorrento | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 68 | 68 |
| Price level global | 64.9 | 64.9 |
| Daily budget | €155 | €155 |
Year-round weather. Sorrento leads by 3 points.3
| Pisa | Sorrento | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 70 | 73 |
| Monthly daytime high | 11.4 °C to 30.3 °C | 13.1 °C to 31.4 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 32 mm to 132 mm | 17 mm to 159 mm |
| Dry months | 2 | 3 |
Where they differ
Pisa keeps more within walking distance: many times as many notable places and tourist attractions, far more park space, about three times as many museums as Sorrento and roughly twice as many restaurants, across a wider range of kitchens. It also has 2 theme parks within reach against Sorrento's 1.
Sorrento is on the water. The sea is at the centre rather than 10km out, there are 78 beaches nearby against Pisa's 1, and 5 UNESCO-listed places lie within day-trip reach against 3.
Where they are alike
Both are mild rather than seasonal places, with daytime highs of 11-30°C in Pisa and 13-31°C in Sorrento, sea warm enough for swimming from early summer into autumn, and long annual sunshine in each.
Nights out are modest in both, a limited set of drinking places and clubs sitting close to the centre rather than a scene to travel for. Open country is similarly limited, with 9% of the land around Pisa protected and 7% around Sorrento.
Which traveller are you?
Travelling with children: Pisa. Attractions and park space sit close to the centre, and there are 2 theme parks within reach against Sorrento's 1, where facilities aimed at families are thin.
Swimming first: Sorrento. The sea starts at the edge of town rather than 10km away, there are 78 beaches to choose between, and the warm-sea season runs a month longer.
Museums and eating out: Pisa, with roughly three times as many museums as Sorrento, tightly grouped around the centre, and about twice the restaurants. Sorrento's counterweight is day trips, with more UNESCO-listed places within reach.
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, so neither is the cheaper trip on this evidence. The €155 a day beside it is one national estimate rather than a measurement of Pisa or Sorrento.
Sorrento's beach advantage is a summer advantage. The swimming months are also the months when a town of 15,400 residents takes the season's visitors, and outside them the weather is the trade: November brings 159mm, heavier than anything Pisa records.
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. Pisa: 1991-2020 normals, Pisa / S. Giusto (3.9 km from centre). Sorrento: 1991-2020 normals, Grazzanise (53.6 km from centre).
Sorrento is the better bet from June to September: July brings highs of 31°C on just 17mm, and the season holds into October, still 23°C with 92mm.
Pisa's window is narrower. It is warm and dry through high summer, but autumn arrives early and heavily, 102mm in September and 125mm the month after, so the late shoulder is far less dependable than Sorrento's.
Getting there
| Flying from | Pisa | Sorrento |
|---|---|---|
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 2 h 5 m €48-62 PSA · 4 km | 2 h 35 m €90-167 1 stop NAP · 30 km |
| MilanMXP, BGY, LIN | 1 h 5 m no fares EBA · 107 km | 1 h 30 m €35-109 NAP · 30 km |
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 40 m no fares PSA · 4 km | 2 h 10 m €108-170 NAP · 30 km |
| PalermoPMO | 1 h 25 m no fares PSA · 4 km | 1 h 0 m €39-94 NAP · 30 km |
| CataniaCTA | 1 h 35 m €55-66 PSA · 4 km | 1 h 5 m €36-65 NAP · 30 km |
| TiranaTIA | 1 h 35 m no fares PSA · 4 km | 1 h 10 m no fares NAP · 30 km |
| RomeFCO, CIA | 55 m €136-139 1 stop FLR · 65 km | 55 m no fares NAP · 30 km |
| AmsterdamAMS | 1 h 55 m €210-262 1 stop PSA · 4 km | 2 h 25 m €163-210 1 stop NAP · 30 km |
| CagliariCAG | 1 h 15 m no fares PSA · 4 km | 1 h 15 m no fares NAP · 30 km |
| Sharm el SheikhSSH | 3 h 55 m no fares BLQ · 115 km | 3 h 25 m no fares NAP · 30 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 2026-09, 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 | Pisa | Sorrento |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | Italian | Italian |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CFL230 V, 50 Hz | CFL230 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 112 |
| Elevation | 4 m | 50 m |
| Main airport | Pisa International Airport (PSA)4 km from centre81 non-stop destinations | Naples International Airport (NAP)30 km from centre131 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 13 days | 13 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Pisa | Sorrento |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 88,737 | 15,407 |
| People per km² | 479 | 1,541 |
| Museums within 10 km | 27 | 5 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 3 | 5 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 29 | 11 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | 4 months | 5 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Pisa or Sorrento somewhere new.