VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Biarritz?

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 nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Biarritz
38
match

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.

Scoreboard

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

AmsterdamBiarritz
Beaches & swimming. Biarritz leads by 27 points.27
AmsterdamBiarritz
Score4067
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km3343
Coast distance24 km1 km
Water distance24 km1 km
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 51 points.51
AmsterdamBiarritz
Score8332
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,957207
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4413
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 49 points.49
AmsterdamBiarritz
Score8031
Museums within 10 km9816
Museums within 2 km of centre695
Share of museums within 2 km %7031
Unesco sites within 50 km52
Nightlife. Amsterdam leads by 55 points.55
AmsterdamBiarritz
Score7015
Drinking venues within 4 km1,543105
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,07882
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7078
Nightclubs within 4 km1146
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 30 points.30
AmsterdamBiarritz
Score6030
Protected land share 50 km %216
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8264
Park area within 2 km49 hectares32 hectares
Good for families. Amsterdam leads by 47 points.47
AmsterdamBiarritz
Score6821
Tourist attractions within 2 km742
Park area within 2 km49 hectares32 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 45 points.45
AmsterdamBiarritz
Score6823
Notable places within 2 km19615
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Biarritz leads by 4 points.4
AmsterdamBiarritz
Score5862
Price level global79.273.7
Daily budget€181€160
Year-round weather. Biarritz leads by 8 points.8
AmsterdamBiarritz
Score5765
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C13.1 °C to 25.8 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm97 mm to 224 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
Biarritz
13
14
16
18
21
23
25
26
24
21
16
14
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Biarritz
13
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Biarritz
166
143
127
147
133
106
97
110
146
166
224
179
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Biarritz
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Biarritz
3
3
5
5
6
6
7
7
6
4
3
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). Biarritz: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Fuenterrabia (24.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamBiarritz
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 12 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 3 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 3 km
MunichMUC
1 h 25 m
€203-231
AMS · 12 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 111 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 12 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 23 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 5 m
€152-186
AMS · 12 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 23 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 20 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 35 m
€182
AMS · 12 km
1 h 20 m
€81-137
BIO · 111 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 40 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 111 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

MeasureAmsterdamBiarritz
Official languageDutchFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911112
Elevation-2 m0 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsBiarritz Pays Basque airport (BIQ)3 km from centre24 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamBiarritz
City population921,46826,206
People per km²4,2082,240
Museums within 10 km1018
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km52
Distinct cuisines in the centre9824
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone2 months

Where else could you go?

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