VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Portland?

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 museums & heritage and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Portland
42
match

Wins on year-round weather 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.

AmsterdamPortland
Beaches & swimming. Amsterdam leads by 40 points.40
AmsterdamPortland
Score400
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km3327
Coast distance24 km69 km
Water distance24 km—
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 9 points.9
AmsterdamPortland
Score8374
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,9571,011
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4444
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 45 points.45
AmsterdamPortland
Score8035
Museums within 10 km9823
Museums within 2 km of centre6915
Share of museums within 2 km %7065
Unesco sites within 50 km50
Nightlife. Amsterdam leads by 12 points.12
AmsterdamPortland
Score7058
Drinking venues within 4 km1,543942
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,078518
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7055
Nightclubs within 4 km11432
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 25 points.25
AmsterdamPortland
Score6035
Protected land share 50 km %2113
Landscape blanket share 50 km %03
Land share of disc %82100
Park area within 2 km49 hectares37 hectares
Good for families. Amsterdam leads by 34 points.34
AmsterdamPortland
Score6834
Tourist attractions within 2 km748
Park area within 2 km49 hectares37 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 33 points.33
AmsterdamPortland
Score6835
Notable places within 2 km19629
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Amsterdam leads by 15 points.15
AmsterdamPortland
Score5843
Price level global79.2100
Daily budget€181—
Year-round weather. Portland leads by 8 points.8
AmsterdamPortland
Score5765
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C7.9 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm13 mm to 145 mm
Dry months03
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
Portland
8
11
13
16
20
23
27
28
25
18
12
8
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Portland
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Portland
128
94
101
75
65
41
13
14
39
87
138
145
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Portland
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
Portland
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). Portland: 1991-2020 normals, Portland International Airport (9.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamPortland
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
5 h 20 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
8 h 25 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
9 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
55 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
9 h 0 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
MinneapolisMSP, STP
8 h 30 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
San FranciscoSFO
11 h 0 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
10 h 0 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
Las VegasLAS
10 h 45 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
2 h 5 m
€173-370
PDX · 10 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

MeasureAmsterdamPortland
Official languageDutch–
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911911
Elevation-2 m152 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsPortland International Airport (PDX)10 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamPortland
City population921,468652,503
People per km²4,2081,736
Museums within 10 km10117
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km50
Distinct cuisines in the centre9882
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 Portland 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.