VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Madrid?

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 museums & heritage with your weighting.

Madrid
66
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.

AmsterdamMadrid
Beaches & swimming. Amsterdam leads by 40 points.40
AmsterdamMadrid
Score400
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km334
Coast distance24 km305 km
Water distance24 km—
Places to eat. Amsterdam and Madrid are level on 83.
AmsterdamMadrid
Score8383
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,9573,508
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4428
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 5 points.5
AmsterdamMadrid
Score8075
Museums within 10 km9897
Museums within 2 km of centre6959
Share of museums within 2 km %7061
Unesco sites within 50 km54
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 11 points.11
AmsterdamMadrid
Score7081
Drinking venues within 4 km1,5432,414
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,0781,498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7062
Nightclubs within 4 km114341
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 3 points.3
AmsterdamMadrid
Score6063
Protected land share 50 km %2119
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %82100
Park area within 2 km49 hectares187 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 9 points.9
AmsterdamMadrid
Score6877
Tourist attractions within 2 km7461
Park area within 2 km49 hectares187 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km33
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 7 points.7
AmsterdamMadrid
Score6875
Notable places within 2 km196288
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 13 points.13
AmsterdamMadrid
Score5871
Price level global79.260.8
Daily budget€181€122
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 15 points.15
AmsterdamMadrid
Score5772
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C10 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm9 mm to 64 mm
Dry months07
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
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Amsterdam: 1991-2020 normals, De Bilt (35.3 km from centre). Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamMadrid
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 12 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 50 m
€188-239
AMS · 12 km
1 h 15 m
€40-87
MAD · 14 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 35 m
€106-155
AMS · 12 km
2 h 0 m
€53-86
MAD · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 10 m
€202-212
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
7 h 20 m
€356-444
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
BogotaBOG
11 h 5 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
10 h 5 m
€963-1395
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
12 h 45 m
no fares
MAD · 14 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

MeasureAmsterdamMadrid
Official languageDutchSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911112
Elevation-2 m663 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamMadrid
City population921,4683,506,730
People per km²4,2085,801
Museums within 10 km10188
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km54
Distinct cuisines in the centre98106
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 Madrid 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.