VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Galway?

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.

Galway
39
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.

AmsterdamGalway
Beaches & swimming. Galway leads by 11 points.11
AmsterdamGalway
Score4051
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km3313
Coast distance24 km1 km
Water distance24 km1 km
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 46 points.46
AmsterdamGalway
Score8337
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,957173
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4420
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 60 points.60
AmsterdamGalway
Score8020
Museums within 10 km985
Museums within 2 km of centre695
Share of museums within 2 km %70100
Unesco sites within 50 km50
Nightlife. Amsterdam leads by 44 points.44
AmsterdamGalway
Score7026
Drinking venues within 4 km1,543185
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,078153
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7083
Nightclubs within 4 km1148
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 5 points.5
AmsterdamGalway
Score6055
Protected land share 50 km %21—
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8285
Park area within 2 km49 hectares65 hectares
Good for families. Amsterdam leads by 43 points.43
AmsterdamGalway
Score6825
Tourist attractions within 2 km745
Park area within 2 km49 hectares65 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km30
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 46 points.46
AmsterdamGalway
Score6822
Notable places within 2 km19614
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Amsterdam leads by 1 points.1
AmsterdamGalway
Score5857
Price level global79.280.2
Daily budget€181€187
Year-round weather. Amsterdam leads by 3 points.3
AmsterdamGalway
Score5754
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C8.9 °C to 19.6 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm63 mm to 113 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
Galway
9
10
11
14
16
19
20
19
18
14
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Galway
9
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
15
14
12
10
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Galway
100
87
76
63
63
72
76
89
77
101
104
113
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Galway
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Galway
2
2
4
5
6
5
4
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). Galway: 1991-2020 normals, Shannon Airport (64.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamGalway
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 12 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 12 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 55 m
€133-166
AMS · 12 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 35 m
€182
AMS · 12 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
BostonBOS, PSM
7 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
6 h 10 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 12 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 35 m
€106-155
AMS · 12 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
NOC · 73 km
EdinburghEDI
1 h 25 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
SNN · 64 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

MeasureAmsterdamGalway
Official languageDutchEnglish, Irish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911112
Elevation-2 m25 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsShannon Airport (SNN)64 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamGalway
City population921,46883,456
People per km²4,2081,563
Museums within 10 km1014
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km50
Distinct cuisines in the centre9825
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 Galway 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.