VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Lisbon?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Amsterdam
65
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nightlife with your weighting.

Lisbon
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on year-round weather and 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.

AmsterdamLisbon
Beaches & swimming. Lisbon leads by 17 points.17
AmsterdamLisbon
Score4057
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km3324
Coast distance24 km2 km
Water distance24 km2 km
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 3 points.3
AmsterdamLisbon
Score8380
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,9572,496
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4431
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 10 points.10
AmsterdamLisbon
Score8070
Museums within 10 km98124
Museums within 2 km of centre6954
Share of museums within 2 km %7044
Unesco sites within 50 km53
Nightlife. Amsterdam leads by 5 points.5
AmsterdamLisbon
Score7065
Drinking venues within 4 km1,5431,225
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,078956
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7078
Nightclubs within 4 km11465
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 4 points.4
AmsterdamLisbon
Score6056
Protected land share 50 km %2111
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8254
Park area within 2 km49 hectares77 hectares
Good for families. Lisbon leads by 1 points.1
AmsterdamLisbon
Score6869
Tourist attractions within 2 km7482
Park area within 2 km49 hectares77 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 2 points.2
AmsterdamLisbon
Score6866
Notable places within 2 km196169
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lisbon leads by 16 points.16
AmsterdamLisbon
Score5874
Price level global79.255.9
Daily budget€181€109
Year-round weather. Lisbon leads by 21 points.21
AmsterdamLisbon
Score5778
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C14.9 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm3 mm to 121 mm
Dry months04
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
Lisbon
15
16
19
20
23
26
28
28
26
23
18
15
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Lisbon
15
15
15
15
16
18
18
19
19
18
17
16
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Lisbon
104
73
72
67
53
13
3
7
36
108
121
102
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Lisbon
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Lisbon
5
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
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). Lisbon: 1991-2020 normals, Lisboa / Geof (1.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamLisbon
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
2 h 30 m
€112-185
LIS · 7 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 12 km
2 h 25 m
€118-145
LIS · 7 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 12 km
1 h 15 m
€64-74
LIS · 7 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
1 h 50 m
€74-97
LIS · 7 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 35 m
€106-155
AMS · 12 km
2 h 35 m
€124-144
LIS · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
7 h 0 m
€621-718
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 12 km
2 h 35 m
€126-176
1 stop
LIS · 7 km
FunchalFNC
3 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 50 m
€132-180
LIS · 7 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
7 h 55 m
€421-500
2 stops
LIS · 7 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 45 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
12 h 55 m
no fares
LIS · 7 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

MeasureAmsterdamLisbon
Official languageDutchPortuguese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911112
Elevation-2 m100 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsLisbon Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS)7 km from centre153 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamLisbon
City population921,468545,796
People per km²4,2085,453
Museums within 10 km10178
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km53
Distinct cuisines in the centre98106
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 Lisbon 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.