How far is Madrid from Bilbao? Here's the quick answer if you are able to make this entire trip by car without stopping.
Nonstop drive: 250 miles or 402 km
Driving time: 3 hours, 48 minutes
Realistically, you'll probably want to add a buffer for rest stops, gas, or food along the way. To get a better idea of how long this trip would really be, scroll down to calculate how many hours it would take if you drive with stops.
Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between Bilbao, Spain and Madrid, Spain. Because of the curvature of the Earth, the shortest distance is actually the "great circle" distance, or "as the crow flies" which is calculated using an iterative Vincenty formula.
Flight distance: 200 miles or 323 km
Flight time: 54 minutes
The straight line flight distance is 50 miles less than driving on roads, which means the driving distance is roughly 1.2x of the flight distance.
Your plane flies much faster than a car, so the flight time is about 1/4th of the time it would take to drive.
This is a relatively short flight in a private plane, but you might be planning to book a commercial flight. In that case, your travel time would really need to include how many minutes to get to your local airport, wait for security, board and taxi on the runway, land at the other airport, and get to your destination. Scroll down to see a more realistic calculation that takes into account all these factors to get a more accurate estimate of your actual flight time.
Let's say you're actually planning a road trip to Madrid, and you want to stop on the way to explore. If it's a real road trip, you might want to check out interesting places along the way, or maybe eat at a great restaurant. That's what Trippy is perfect for, helping you figure out travel plans in detail.
Road trip: 1 day of driving
With the full itinerary planned out, we can estimate your total travel time for this trip.
Travel time: 5.5 hours on the road
Itinerary
Start in Bilbao.
Drive for about 47 minutes, then stop in Vitoria-Gasteiz and stay for about 1 hour.
Next, drive for another 1.5 hours then stop in Burgos and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 55 minutes then stop in Aranda de Duero and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 55 minutes then stop in Pedraza and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 1 hour then stop at La Latina and stay for 1 hour.
Finally, drive for about 17 minutes and arrive in Madrid.
To see all the details on this itinerary, including recommended restaurants, hotels, and things to do along the way, check out the full road trip planner:
In the quick calculation above, we assumed you had a private plane and just wanted to know the time in the air from city to city. But for most of us, we're going to be flying on a commercial airline (whether it's first class or coach). So that means we really need to account for all the extra travel time getting to the airport, waiting for our flight, and making it to the destination.
To give you a better estimate of real-life travel, we've put together a flight itinerary with actual airports. Eventually you'll be able to customize this plan, choosing your own airports and flights. But for now, here's an example we've selected to give you an idea of how traveling might work between airports.
Departure airport: Bilbao Airport (BIO)
Arrival airport: Madrid-Barajas Airport (MAD)
With the airports selected, we can estimate the travel time to and from the airport, based on how far the airport is from downtown.
Getting to the airport: 9 minutes
Getting to your destination: 26 minutes
Now finally, let's look at an example flight from BIO to MAD and figure out how long it would take to fly including take-off and landing, and time to taxi on the runway.
Commercial flight time: 54 minutes
So now we can finally get an idea of the total travel time from Bilbao to Madrid including time spent getting to/from the airports, an estimated wait time of 2 hours at the airport for TSA security lines and waiting at the gate, and the actual flight itself.
Total travel time: 3 hours
To see the details on this flight plan, including recommended airports, airline, and route, check out the flight planner:
Trippy has a ton of information that can help you plan your trip to Madrid, Spain. Start by reading the Trippy page on where to stay in Madrid. If you're looking for a place to stay, you might want to check out Radisson Blu Hotel, Madrid Prado. A great place to eat might be Mercado de San Miguel. Trippy members can suggest things to do in Madrid like Plaza Mayor. Check out some of the questions people have asked about Madrid like Should we spend 3 days in Madrid in January?. Click the button below to explore Madrid in detail.
The distance is the same either way if you're flying a straight line (or driving the same roads back and forth). But for a real trip, there can be plenty of differences so go ahead and check the reverse directions to get the distance from Madrid to Bilbao, or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities.
If you happen to know Bilbao, don't forget to help other travelers and answer some questions about Bilbao!
More info on this route:
drive from Bilbao to Madrid
road conditions
alternate routes
Google driving directions