VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Edinburgh?

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 nature & day trips and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Edinburgh
58
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

AmsterdamEdinburgh
Beaches & swimming. Edinburgh leads by 15 points.15
AmsterdamEdinburgh
Score4055
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km3320
Coast distance24 km3 km
Water distance24 km3 km
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 13 points.13
AmsterdamEdinburgh
Score8370
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,9571,023
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4435
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 23 points.23
AmsterdamEdinburgh
Score8057
Museums within 10 km9830
Museums within 2 km of centre6922
Share of museums within 2 km %7073
Unesco sites within 50 km53
Nightlife. Amsterdam leads by 6 points.6
AmsterdamEdinburgh
Score7064
Drinking venues within 4 km1,5431,193
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,078884
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7074
Nightclubs within 4 km11465
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 25 points.25
AmsterdamEdinburgh
Score6035
Protected land share 50 km %212
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %8285
Park area within 2 km49 hectares166 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 4 points.4
AmsterdamEdinburgh
Score6872
Tourist attractions within 2 km7487
Park area within 2 km49 hectares166 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km30
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 8 points.8
AmsterdamEdinburgh
Score6860
Notable places within 2 km196126
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Amsterdam leads by 4 points.4
AmsterdamEdinburgh
Score5854
Price level global79.284.9
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. Amsterdam leads by 6 points.6
AmsterdamEdinburgh
Score5751
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C6.6 °C to 18.8 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm43 mm to 80 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
Edinburgh
7
7
9
12
14
17
19
19
17
13
9
7
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Edinburgh
2
3
4
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
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). Edinburgh: 1991-2020 normals, Edinburgh Airport (10 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamEdinburgh
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
1 h 20 m
€41-45
EDI · 11 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
2 h 40 m
€58-103
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 35 m
€106-155
AMS · 12 km
2 h 20 m
€75-101
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 12 km
1 h 40 m
€78-108
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 12 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 15 m
€166-175
AMS · 12 km
4 h 0 m
€201-242
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
1 h 50 m
€55-94
EDI · 11 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
6 h 50 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
7 h 30 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
CancunCUN
10 h 25 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
GLA · 78 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

MeasureAmsterdamEdinburgh
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 m47 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamEdinburgh
City population921,468488,050
People per km²4,2081,884
Museums within 10 km10132
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km53
Distinct cuisines in the centre9878
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 Edinburgh 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.