VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Lyon?

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

Lyon
52
match

Wins on year-round weather and value for money 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.

AmsterdamLyon
Beaches & swimming. Amsterdam leads by 40 points.40
AmsterdamLyon
Score400
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km3326
Coast distance24 km253 km
Water distance24 km
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 4 points.4
AmsterdamLyon
Score8379
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,9571,691
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4440
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 25 points.25
AmsterdamLyon
Score8055
Museums within 10 km9853
Museums within 2 km of centre6925
Share of museums within 2 km %7047
Unesco sites within 50 km52
Nightlife. Amsterdam leads by 12 points.12
AmsterdamLyon
Score7058
Drinking venues within 4 km1,543866
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,078611
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7071
Nightclubs within 4 km11447
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 27 points.27
AmsterdamLyon
Score6033
Protected land share 50 km %216
Landscape blanket share 50 km %06
Land share of disc %82100
Park area within 2 km49 hectares120 hectares
Good for families. Amsterdam leads by 9 points.9
AmsterdamLyon
Score6859
Tourist attractions within 2 km7425
Park area within 2 km49 hectares120 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 14 points.14
AmsterdamLyon
Score6854
Notable places within 2 km19686
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lyon leads by 4 points.4
AmsterdamLyon
Score5862
Price level global79.273.7
Daily budget€181€160
Year-round weather. Lyon leads by 7 points.7
AmsterdamLyon
Score5764
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C7 °C to 28 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm43 mm to 101 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
Lyon
7
9
14
17
21
26
28
28
23
18
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Lyon
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Lyon
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
6
4
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). Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamLyon
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 15 m
€166-175
AMS · 12 km
3 h 0 m
€167-217
LYS · 20 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 12 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
1 h 20 m
€70-92
LYS · 20 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 50 m
€188-239
AMS · 12 km
2 h 20 m
€109-165
LYS · 20 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 12 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 5 m
€152-186
AMS · 12 km
1 h 20 m
€195-211
2 stops
LYS · 20 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
6 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 111 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
GVA · 111 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

MeasureAmsterdamLyon
Official languageDutchFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911112
Elevation-2 m160 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamLyon
City population921,468519,127
People per km²4,20810,838
Museums within 10 km10142
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km52
Distinct cuisines in the centre98148
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 Lyon 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.