VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Riga?

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 good for families and places to eat with your weighting.

Riga
53
match

Wins on 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.

AmsterdamRiga
Beaches & swimming. Amsterdam and Riga are level on 40.
AmsterdamRiga
Score4040
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km3357
Coast distance24 km12 km
Water distance24 km12 km
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 24 points.24
AmsterdamRiga
Score8359
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,957470
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4433
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 19 points.19
AmsterdamRiga
Score8061
Museums within 10 km9869
Museums within 2 km of centre6947
Share of museums within 2 km %7068
Unesco sites within 50 km51
Nightlife. Amsterdam leads by 19 points.19
AmsterdamRiga
Score7051
Drinking venues within 4 km1,543584
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,078456
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7078
Nightclubs within 4 km11454
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 16 points.16
AmsterdamRiga
Score6044
Protected land share 50 km %2110
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8273
Park area within 2 km49 hectares68 hectares
Good for families. Amsterdam leads by 33 points.33
AmsterdamRiga
Score6835
Tourist attractions within 2 km747
Park area within 2 km49 hectares68 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 6 points.6
AmsterdamRiga
Score6862
Notable places within 2 km196137
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Riga leads by 18 points.18
AmsterdamRiga
Score5876
Price level global79.253.7
Daily budget€181€132
Year-round weather. Amsterdam leads by 5 points.5
AmsterdamRiga
Score5752
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm33 mm to 87 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
Riga
0
0
4
12
17
21
24
22
17
11
5
1
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Riga
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). Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamRiga
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
HelsinkiHEL
2 h 25 m
€200-244
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 12 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
OsloOSL, TRF
1 h 50 m
€155-209
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 15 m
€166-175
AMS · 12 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 5 m
€152-186
AMS · 12 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 50 m
€209-257
AMS · 12 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
5 h 45 m
no fares
RIX · 9 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

MeasureAmsterdamRiga
Official languageDutchLatvian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911112
Elevation-2 m6 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamRiga
City population921,468588,911
People per km²4,208
Museums within 10 km10112
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km51
Distinct cuisines in the centre9855
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Amsterdam or Riga 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.