VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Kyoto?

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 beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Kyoto
58
match

Wins on value for money and nightlife 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.

AmsterdamKyoto
Beaches & swimming. Amsterdam leads by 23 points.23
AmsterdamKyoto
Score4017
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km330
Coast distance24 km47 km
Water distance24 km47 km
Places to eat. Kyoto leads by 1 points.1
AmsterdamKyoto
Score8384
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,9575,023
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4422
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 8 points.8
AmsterdamKyoto
Score8072
Museums within 10 km98132
Museums within 2 km of centre6951
Share of museums within 2 km %7039
Unesco sites within 50 km54
Nightlife. Kyoto leads by 10 points.10
AmsterdamKyoto
Score7080
Drinking venues within 4 km1,5433,215
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,0782,363
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7073
Nightclubs within 4 km11426
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 38 points.38
AmsterdamKyoto
Score6022
Protected land share 50 km %212
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %82100
Park area within 2 km49 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. Amsterdam leads by 2 points.2
AmsterdamKyoto
Score6866
Tourist attractions within 2 km7462
Park area within 2 km49 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km34
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 16 points.16
AmsterdamKyoto
Score6852
Notable places within 2 km19679
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Kyoto leads by 12 points.12
AmsterdamKyoto
Score5870
Price level global79.262.4
Daily budget€181—
Year-round weather. Kyoto leads by 5 points.5
AmsterdamKyoto
Score5762
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C8.6 °C to 32.4 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm40 mm to 232 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
Kyoto
9
9
13
20
24
27
31
32
28
22
17
11
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Kyoto
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Kyoto
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Amsterdam: 1991-2020 normals, De Bilt (35.3 km from centre). Kyoto: 1971-2000 (sunshine 1991-2020) normals, Kyoto (3.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamKyoto
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 45 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 81 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 40 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 39 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
2 h 10 m
€237-303
KIX · 81 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 12 km
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 15 m
€166-175
AMS · 12 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 30 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
5 h 35 m
€288-317
KIX · 81 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
10 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
KIX · 81 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

MeasureAmsterdamKyoto
Official languageDutchJapanese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yen (JPY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number112 or 911Police 110, fire 119
Elevation-2 m51 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamKyoto
City population921,4681,463,723
People per km²4,2081,768
Museums within 10 km10176
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km54
Distinct cuisines in the centre9889
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Amsterdam or Kyoto 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.