VacationSelector

Amsterdam or New York?

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 nature & day trips and museums & heritage with your weighting.

New York
66
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

AmsterdamNew York
Beaches & swimming. New York leads by 24 points.24
AmsterdamNew York
Score4064
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km3317
Coast distance24 km1 km
Water distance24 km1 km
Places to eat. New York leads by 12 points.12
AmsterdamNew York
Score8395
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,9576,032
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4438
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 20 points.20
AmsterdamNew York
Score8060
Museums within 10 km98119
Museums within 2 km of centre6931
Share of museums within 2 km %7026
Unesco sites within 50 km52
Nightlife. New York leads by 19 points.19
AmsterdamNew York
Score7089
Drinking venues within 4 km1,5434,159
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,0782,015
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7048
Nightclubs within 4 km114192
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 21 points.21
AmsterdamNew York
Score6039
Protected land share 50 km %214
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8269
Park area within 2 km49 hectares134 hectares
Good for families. New York leads by 4 points.4
AmsterdamNew York
Score6872
Tourist attractions within 2 km7437
Park area within 2 km49 hectares134 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km37
Sights concentration. New York leads by 6 points.6
AmsterdamNew York
Score6874
Notable places within 2 km196268
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Amsterdam leads by 15 points.15
AmsterdamNew York
Score5843
Price level global79.2100
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. New York leads by 1 points.1
AmsterdamNew York
Score5758
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C4.5 °C to 30.1 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm74 mm to 112 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
New York
5
6
10
16
22
27
30
29
25
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
New York
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
New York
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Amsterdam: 1991-2020 normals, De Bilt (35.3 km from centre). New York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamNew York
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
7 h 10 m
€459-498
JFK · 21 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 12 km
7 h 30 m
€445-517
JFK · 21 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
9 h 0 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
2 h 5 m
€165-236
EWR · 14 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 12 km
7 h 25 m
€474-553
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 35 m
€106-155
AMS · 12 km
8 h 15 m
€430-458
JFK · 21 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 12 km
6 h 40 m
€391-493
JFK · 21 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 45 m
€458-478
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
1 h 20 m
€206-234
LGA · 13 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
13 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
11 h 30 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
4 h 40 m
€374-446
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 40 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 21 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

MeasureAmsterdamNew York
Official languageDutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911911
Elevation-2 m25 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamNew York
City population921,4688,804,190
People per km²4,2087,256
Museums within 10 km101157
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km52
Distinct cuisines in the centre98132
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Amsterdam or New York 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 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.