VacationSelector

Amsterdam or London?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Amsterdam
65
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

London
64
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Amsterdam if you want the compact version: museums and nightlife clustered close to the centre, more protected countryside for day trips, and a coast where the sea reaches 19°C in August.

Choose London if you want range: far more places to drink and dance, about three times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, and more park space near the centre for a family week.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

AmsterdamLondon
Beaches & swimming. Amsterdam leads by 40 points.40
AmsterdamLondon
Score400
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km3347
Coast distance24 km43 km
Water distance24 km—
Places to eat. London leads by 5 points.5
AmsterdamLondon
Score8388
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,9573,317
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4440
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 8 points.8
AmsterdamLondon
Score8072
Museums within 10 km98148
Museums within 2 km of centre6949
Share of museums within 2 km %7033
Unesco sites within 50 km54
Nightlife. London leads by 25 points.25
AmsterdamLondon
Score7095
Drinking venues within 4 km1,5435,327
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,0782,443
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7046
Nightclubs within 4 km114312
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 20 points.20
AmsterdamLondon
Score6040
Protected land share 50 km %2116
Landscape blanket share 50 km %014
Land share of disc %8297
Park area within 2 km49 hectares84 hectares
Good for families. London leads by 7 points.7
AmsterdamLondon
Score6875
Tourist attractions within 2 km7485
Park area within 2 km49 hectares84 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km33
Sights concentration. London leads by 21 points.21
AmsterdamLondon
Score6889
Notable places within 2 km196649
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Amsterdam leads by 4 points.4
AmsterdamLondon
Score5854
Price level global79.284.9
Daily budget€181—
Year-round weather. London leads by 6 points.6
AmsterdamLondon
Score5763
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C8.2 °C to 23.8 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm38 mm to 67 mm
Dry months01
0255075100

Where they differ

Amsterdam gives you water you can actually use, with 33 beaches in reach and a sea that touches 19°C in August, and greener surroundings, 21% of the land protected against 16% around London. Its museums sit tightly around the centre, with 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 4.

London is the bigger night out, with roughly three times as many bars and clubs, and about three times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre. It also has about twice as many restaurants near the centre.

Where they are alike

Value for money is where they sit closest. Neither city stands out against the other there, so the choice is unlikely to turn on it.

Beyond that, both cover a similar spread of kitchens, even if London has more restaurants; both run through much the same year, with highs of 6-23°C in Amsterdam and 8-24°C in London; and both work for families, each with 3 theme parks in reach and a comparable number of attractions near the centre.

Which traveller are you?

For a weekend built around bars, clubs and late food, London: about three times as many places to drink and dance, and enough notable sights packed within walking distance to fill the days between.

For families, it is close. London has more park space near the centre and both have 3 theme parks in reach, but Amsterdam's attractions sit tighter together, which means less moving about with children.

For anyone who wants countryside and water, Amsterdam: 21% of the surrounding land is protected, day trips reach 5 UNESCO-listed places, and the sea hits 19°C in August.

What the numbers don't tell you

No cost comparison is possible here. The dataset carries a daily budget for Amsterdam but none at all for London, and the value-for-money reading rests on a different measure that both cities share, so treat it as a rough ranking rather than a statement about what a trip will cost.

Beach counts also flatter both. London has more beaches nearby than Amsterdam, yet neither has a month of sea at 21°C or more, and Amsterdam's own peak, 19°C, arrives in August, the same stretch that brings its heaviest rain at about 85mm.

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
London
8
9
12
15
18
22
24
23
20
16
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
London
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
London
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
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
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). London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Amsterdam is at its best in July and August, with highs of 23°C and a sea that reaches 19°C, though these are also its wettest months, near 85mm. April is the drier option, about 42mm, better for walking than for swimming.

London stays drier through high summer, 46-53mm with highs of 23-24°C, and its driest stretch falls in March at 38mm. Its winters are milder as well, which makes the off-season a more realistic time to visit than in Amsterdam.

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamLondon
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
2 h 0 m
€61-144
LGW · 40 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 55 m
€133-166
AMS · 12 km
2 h 35 m
€119-292
1 stop
LGW · 40 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 35 m
€106-155
AMS · 12 km
1 h 45 m
€83-138
LGW · 40 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 12 km
2 h 10 m
€124-216
LHR · 23 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 12 km
1 h 5 m
€92-144
LHR · 23 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 35 m
€182
AMS · 12 km
2 h 20 m
€66-100
LGW · 40 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
11 h 30 m
€665-831
1 stop
LHR · 23 km
CancunCUN
10 h 25 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
LGW · 40 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

MeasureAmsterdamLondon
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 m4 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre220 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamLondon
City population921,4688,799,728
People per km²4,2085,598
Museums within 10 km101215
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km54
Distinct cuisines in the centre98116
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 London 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.