VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Athens?

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

Your match

Amsterdam
65
match

Wins on nature & day trips and places to eat with your weighting.

Athens
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on year-round weather and value for money with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

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

AmsterdamAthens
Beaches & swimming. Athens leads by 8 points.8
AmsterdamAthens
Score4048
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km3314
Coast distance24 km6 km
Water distance24 km6 km
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 14 points.14
AmsterdamAthens
Score8369
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,9571,431
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4425
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 7 points.7
AmsterdamAthens
Score8073
Museums within 10 km98122
Museums within 2 km of centre6978
Share of museums within 2 km %7064
Unesco sites within 50 km52
Nightlife. Athens leads by 11 points.11
AmsterdamAthens
Score7081
Drinking venues within 4 km1,5432,718
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,0781,354
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7050
Nightclubs within 4 km114136
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 15 points.15
AmsterdamAthens
Score6045
Protected land share 50 km %215
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8250
Park area within 2 km49 hectares128 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 3 points.3
AmsterdamAthens
Score6871
Tourist attractions within 2 km7468
Park area within 2 km49 hectares128 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 7 points.7
AmsterdamAthens
Score6875
Notable places within 2 km196291
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 16 points.16
AmsterdamAthens
Score5874
Price level global79.255.8
Daily budget€181€125
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 17 points.17
AmsterdamAthens
Score5774
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C13.4 °C to 34.5 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm6 mm to 86 mm
Dry months07
0255075100

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
Amsterdam
6
7
11
15
18
21
23
23
20
15
10
7
Athens
13
14
17
21
27
32
34
35
30
24
19
15
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Amsterdam: 1991-2020 normals, De Bilt (35.3 km from centre). Athens: 1991-2020 normals, Athens / Athenai / Pláka (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamAthens
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 15 m
€166-175
AMS · 12 km
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 12 km
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
ThessalonikiSKG
2 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 0 m
€103-128
ATH · 20 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 35 m
€106-155
AMS · 12 km
2 h 25 m
€71-91
ATH · 20 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
2 h 55 m
€134-222
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
HeraklionHER
3 h 35 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 0 m
€84-111
ATH · 20 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
4 h 30 m
€286-308
ATH · 20 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
10 h 45 m
no fares
ATH · 20 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

MeasureAmsterdamAthens
Official languageDutchGreek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911112
Elevation-2 m74 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamAthens
City population921,468643,452
People per km²4,20816,499
Museums within 10 km10188
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km52
Distinct cuisines in the centre9882
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

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