VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Santiago de Compostela?

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 beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Santiago de Compostela
42
match

Wins on value for money and 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.

AmsterdamSantiago de Compostela
Beaches & swimming. Amsterdam leads by 40 points.40
AmsterdamSantiago de Compostela
Score400
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km330
Coast distance24 km26 km
Water distance24 km26 km
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 35 points.35
AmsterdamSantiago de Compostela
Score8348
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,957336
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4423
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 36 points.36
AmsterdamSantiago de Compostela
Score8044
Museums within 10 km9816
Museums within 2 km of centre6914
Share of museums within 2 km %7088
Unesco sites within 50 km52
Nightlife. Amsterdam leads by 34 points.34
AmsterdamSantiago de Compostela
Score7036
Drinking venues within 4 km1,543306
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,078268
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7088
Nightclubs within 4 km11413
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 14 points.14
AmsterdamSantiago de Compostela
Score6046
Protected land share 50 km %2111
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8292
Park area within 2 km49 hectares109 hectares
Good for families. Amsterdam leads by 41 points.41
AmsterdamSantiago de Compostela
Score6827
Tourist attractions within 2 km742
Park area within 2 km49 hectares109 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km30
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 26 points.26
AmsterdamSantiago de Compostela
Score6842
Notable places within 2 km19644
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Santiago de Compostela leads by 13 points.13
AmsterdamSantiago de Compostela
Score5871
Price level global79.260.8
Daily budget€181€122
Year-round weather. Santiago de Compostela leads by 5 points.5
AmsterdamSantiago de Compostela
Score5762
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C11.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm41 mm to 223 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
Santiago de Compostela
11
13
15
17
20
23
25
25
23
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Santiago de Compostela
14
13
13
14
15
16
17
17
17
16
15
14
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Santiago de Compostela
217
149
153
136
116
61
41
61
91
208
223
222
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Santiago de Compostela
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Santiago de Compostela
3
4
5
6
7
7
8
8
6
4
3
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Amsterdam: 1991-2020 normals, De Bilt (35.3 km from centre). Santiago de Compostela: 1991-2020 normals, Santiago / Labacolla (8.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamSantiago de Compostela
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
1 h 40 m
€71-184
SCQ · 10 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 12 km
1 h 15 m
€86-122
SCQ · 10 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 55 m
€133-166
AMS · 12 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 35 m
€182
AMS · 12 km
1 h 40 m
€218-283
1 stop
SCQ · 10 km
SevillaSVQ
2 h 50 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
4 h 30 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 20 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
SCQ · 10 km
ValenciaVLC
2 h 25 m
€152-192
AMS · 12 km
1 h 35 m
€114-174
1 stop
SCQ · 10 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 40 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
SCQ · 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

MeasureAmsterdamSantiago de Compostela
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 m260 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsSantiago-Rosalía de Castro Airport (SCQ)10 km from centre27 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamSantiago de Compostela
City population921,468100,965
People per km²4,208459
Museums within 10 km1016
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km52
Distinct cuisines in the centre9838
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 Santiago de Compostela 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.