VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Boston?

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 good for families with your weighting.

Boston
55
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.

AmsterdamBoston
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 20 points.20
AmsterdamBoston
Score4060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km3368
Coast distance24 km1 km
Water distance24 km1 km
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 10 points.10
AmsterdamBoston
Score8373
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,9571,452
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4432
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 37 points.37
AmsterdamBoston
Score8043
Museums within 10 km9879
Museums within 2 km of centre6927
Share of museums within 2 km %7034
Unesco sites within 50 km50
Nightlife. Amsterdam leads by 12 points.12
AmsterdamBoston
Score7058
Drinking venues within 4 km1,543886
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,078513
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7058
Nightclubs within 4 km11443
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 7 points.7
AmsterdamBoston
Score6053
Protected land share 50 km %2112
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8277
Park area within 2 km49 hectares116 hectares
Good for families. Amsterdam leads by 15 points.15
AmsterdamBoston
Score6853
Tourist attractions within 2 km7428
Park area within 2 km49 hectares116 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km30
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 10 points.10
AmsterdamBoston
Score6858
Notable places within 2 km196111
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Amsterdam leads by 15 points.15
AmsterdamBoston
Score5843
Price level global79.2100
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. Amsterdam leads by 1 points.1
AmsterdamBoston
Score5756
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C2.9 °C to 28 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm79 mm to 107 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
Boston
3
4
8
14
19
25
28
27
23
17
11
6
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Boston
10
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
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
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). Boston: 1991-2020 normals, Boston Logan International (3.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamBoston
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
7 h 35 m
€481-586
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 12 km
6 h 20 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 12 km
7 h 5 m
€570
BOS · 4 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 12 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 45 m
€458-478
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
1 h 30 m
€211-283
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
13 h 15 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
Punta CanaPUJ
9 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
13 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 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

MeasureAmsterdamBoston
Official languageDutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911911
Elevation-2 m43 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamBoston
City population921,468675,647
People per km²4,2082,910
Museums within 10 km10151
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km50
Distinct cuisines in the centre9874
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 Boston 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.