VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Belfast?

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 museums & heritage and places to eat with your weighting.

Belfast
48
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

AmsterdamBelfast
Beaches & swimming. Belfast leads by 8 points.8
AmsterdamBelfast
Score4048
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km3310
Coast distance24 km1 km
Water distance24 km1 km
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 27 points.27
AmsterdamBelfast
Score8356
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,957432
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4431
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 51 points.51
AmsterdamBelfast
Score8029
Museums within 10 km9818
Museums within 2 km of centre696
Share of museums within 2 km %7033
Unesco sites within 50 km51
Nightlife. Amsterdam leads by 22 points.22
AmsterdamBelfast
Score7048
Drinking venues within 4 km1,543550
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,078348
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7063
Nightclubs within 4 km11429
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 7 points.7
AmsterdamBelfast
Score6053
Protected land share 50 km %2119
Landscape blanket share 50 km %013
Land share of disc %8265
Park area within 2 km49 hectares68 hectares
Good for families. Amsterdam leads by 20 points.20
AmsterdamBelfast
Score6848
Tourist attractions within 2 km7416
Park area within 2 km49 hectares68 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 26 points.26
AmsterdamBelfast
Score6842
Notable places within 2 km19643
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Amsterdam leads by 4 points.4
AmsterdamBelfast
Score5854
Price level global79.284.9
Daily budget€181—
Year-round weather. Amsterdam leads by 6 points.6
AmsterdamBelfast
Score5751
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C6.9 °C to 19 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm55 mm to 89 mm
Dry months00
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
Belfast
7
8
10
12
15
18
19
19
17
13
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Belfast
9
8
8
8
9
11
12
13
14
14
12
11
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Belfast
74
62
60
56
55
65
74
86
67
89
87
85
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Belfast
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Belfast
2
2
3
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Amsterdam: 1991-2020 normals, De Bilt (35.3 km from centre). Belfast: 1991-2020 normals, Belfast / Aldergrove Airport (19.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamBelfast
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
1 h 15 m
€72-142
BHD · 4 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
6 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 12 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
EdinburghEDI
1 h 25 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
55 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 55 m
€133-166
AMS · 12 km
3 h 0 m
€135-197
BFS · 20 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 20 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
7 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
CancunCUN
10 h 25 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
9 h 30 m
no fares
DUB · 132 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

MeasureAmsterdamBelfast
Official languageDutchEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911112 or 999
Elevation-2 m3 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsGeorge Best Belfast City Airport (BHD)4 km from centre24 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamBelfast
City population921,468345,006
People per km²4,2083,000
Museums within 10 km1018
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km51
Distinct cuisines in the centre9844
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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