VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Budapest?

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.

Budapest
60
match

Wins on value for money 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.

AmsterdamBudapest
Beaches & swimming. Amsterdam leads by 40 points.40
AmsterdamBudapest
Score400
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km336
Coast distance24 km10,000 km
Water distance24 km—
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 6 points.6
AmsterdamBudapest
Score8377
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,9571,699
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4435
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 16 points.16
AmsterdamBudapest
Score8064
Museums within 10 km98144
Museums within 2 km of centre6964
Share of museums within 2 km %7044
Unesco sites within 50 km51
Nightlife. Budapest leads by 2 points.2
AmsterdamBudapest
Score7072
Drinking venues within 4 km1,5431,765
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,0781,168
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7066
Nightclubs within 4 km11497
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 20 points.20
AmsterdamBudapest
Score6040
Protected land share 50 km %218
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %82100
Park area within 2 km49 hectares111 hectares
Good for families. Budapest leads by 3 points.3
AmsterdamBudapest
Score6871
Tourist attractions within 2 km7475
Park area within 2 km49 hectares111 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Budapest leads by 1 points.1
AmsterdamBudapest
Score6869
Notable places within 2 km196206
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Budapest leads by 22 points.22
AmsterdamBudapest
Score5880
Price level global79.248
Daily budget€181€104
Year-round weather. Budapest leads by 7 points.7
AmsterdamBudapest
Score5764
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C3.6 °C to 27.9 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm27 mm to 75 mm
Dry months05
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
Budapest
4
7
11
17
22
26
27
28
22
16
9
4
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Budapest
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Budapest
29
27
30
37
67
67
75
60
48
41
48
39
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Budapest
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Budapest
2
4
5
7
9
9
10
9
7
5
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). Budapest: 1991-2020 normals, Budapest Met Center (2.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamBudapest
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
2 h 25 m
€63-91
BUD · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 15 m
€166-175
AMS · 12 km
1 h 50 m
€87-214
BUD · 18 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 35 m
€106-155
AMS · 12 km
1 h 40 m
€42-56
BUD · 18 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
2 h 25 m
€93-118
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 12 km
2 h 10 m
€97-114
BUD · 18 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 12 km
3 h 0 m
€84-154
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
1 h 50 m
€60-87
BUD · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
5 h 25 m
€276-394
2 stops
BUD · 18 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
10 h 30 m
€698-839
3 stops
BUD · 18 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 45 m
€458-478
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
BUD · 18 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

MeasureAmsterdamBudapest
Official languageDutchHungarian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Forint (HUF)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911112
Elevation-2 m117 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsBudapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport (BUD)18 km from centre155 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamBudapest
City population921,4681,685,209
People per km²4,2083,209
Museums within 10 km10181
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km51
Distinct cuisines in the centre9886
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 Budapest 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.