VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Beijing?

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

Your match

Amsterdam
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Beijing
53
match

Wins on value for money and 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.

Scoreboard

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

AmsterdamBeijing
Beaches & swimming. Amsterdam leads by 40 points.40
AmsterdamBeijing
Score400
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km330
Coast distance24 km145 km
Water distance24 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 17 points.17
AmsterdamBeijing
Score8063
Museums within 10 km9895
Museums within 2 km of centre6915
Share of museums within 2 km %7016
Unesco sites within 50 km56
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 25 points.25
AmsterdamBeijing
Score6035
Protected land share 50 km %213
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %82100
Park area within 2 km49 hectares143 hectares
Good for families. Beijing leads by 9 points.9
AmsterdamBeijing
Score6877
Tourist attractions within 2 km7441
Park area within 2 km49 hectares143 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km312
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 18 points.18
AmsterdamBeijing
Score6850
Notable places within 2 km19669
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Beijing leads by 21 points.21
AmsterdamBeijing
Score5879
Price level global79.249
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. Beijing leads by 9 points.9
AmsterdamBeijing
Score5766
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C2.2 °C to 31.8 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm3 mm to 163 mm
Dry months08
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
Beijing
2
6
13
21
27
31
32
31
27
19
10
4
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Beijing
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Beijing
3
6
9
23
38
74
163
112
56
27
14
3
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Beijing
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Beijing
6
6
7
8
9
7
6
7
7
7
6
6

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Amsterdam: 1991-2020 normals, De Bilt (35.3 km from centre). Beijing: 1991-2020 normals, Beijing (11.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamBeijing
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
10 h 15 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 55 m
€144-160
PKX · 45 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 15 m
€166-175
AMS · 12 km
9 h 0 m
€475-645
PEK · 25 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 45 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 45 m
€180-197
PKX · 45 km
Hong KongHKG
11 h 35 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
2 h 55 m
€151-190
PKX · 45 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 12 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 45 m
€458-478
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
13 h 5 m
€1,020-1172
2 stops
PEK · 25 km
DohaDOH
6 h 30 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
7 h 55 m
€595-787
3 stops
PKX · 45 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
21 h 20 m
no fares
PEK · 25 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

MeasureAmsterdamBeijing
Official languageDutchPutonghua
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yuan Renminbi (CNY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzACI220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number112 or 911Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119
Elevation-2 m43 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsBeijing Capital International Airport (PEK)25 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days6 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamBeijing
City population921,46821,893,095
People per km²4,2081,334
Museums within 10 km10183
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km56
Distinct cuisines in the centre9829
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Amsterdam or Beijing 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

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.