VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Stockholm?

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

Stockholm
62
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Amsterdam for its museums, its day trips into protected countryside and its wider spread of restaurants, and for milder winters, with January highs near 6°C.

Choose Stockholm if you want water: the sea reaches the centre, 73 beaches lie nearby, and the walkable core holds more notable places within a short stroll. Summer here is warmer and spring is markedly drier.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

AmsterdamStockholm
Beaches & swimming. Stockholm leads by 20 points.20
AmsterdamStockholm
Score4060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km3373
Coast distance24 km0 km
Water distance24 km0 km
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 7 points.7
AmsterdamStockholm
Score8376
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,9571,558
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4436
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 11 points.11
AmsterdamStockholm
Score8069
Museums within 10 km9874
Museums within 2 km of centre6947
Share of museums within 2 km %7064
Unesco sites within 50 km53
Nightlife. Amsterdam leads by 6 points.6
AmsterdamStockholm
Score7064
Drinking venues within 4 km1,5431,090
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,078689
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7063
Nightclubs within 4 km114106
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 19 points.19
AmsterdamStockholm
Score6041
Protected land share 50 km %217
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8277
Park area within 2 km49 hectares104 hectares
Good for families. Amsterdam leads by 11 points.11
AmsterdamStockholm
Score6857
Tourist attractions within 2 km7423
Park area within 2 km49 hectares104 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Stockholm leads by 11 points.11
AmsterdamStockholm
Score6879
Notable places within 2 km196357
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Amsterdam leads by 1 points.1
AmsterdamStockholm
Score5857
Price level global79.280.3
Daily budget€181€169
Year-round weather. Amsterdam leads by 4 points.4
AmsterdamStockholm
Score5753
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C1 °C to 23.6 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm27 mm to 66 mm
Dry months05
0255075100

Where they differ

Amsterdam has more museums and reaches 5 UNESCO-listed places on a day trip against Stockholm's 3. The land around it is far more protected, 21% against 7%, so excursions out of the city repay the effort. It also has more restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens.

Stockholm's centre sits on the water, 0km to the sea against Amsterdam's 24km, with 73 beaches nearby against 33. Its core also packs about twice as many notable places within walking distance.

Where they are alike

Cost separates them least: the national daily estimates sit close, €181 for the Netherlands and €169 for Sweden.

They also run close on weather, eating and nights out. Both peak in July, at 23°C in Amsterdam and 24°C in Stockholm, and neither has a month with the sea at 21°C or more. Both have a good spread of places to drink and a similar number of nightclubs, most of them near the centre.

Which traveller are you?

Travelling with children: Amsterdam, with about three times as many tourist attractions near the centre and 3 theme parks within reach against Stockholm's 2. Stockholm answers with roughly twice as much central park space, which suits younger children.

Anyone who wants to swim: Stockholm, where the sea meets the centre and 73 beaches sit nearby. Time it for August, when the water is warmest at 17°C; neither city offers genuinely warm-sea swimming.

Museum-minded visitors: Amsterdam, with more museums and more UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach. Stockholm suits those who would rather have everything walkable, its centre holding more notable places close in.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figure is a national estimate, one for the Netherlands and one for Sweden, covering restaurant and hotel price levels country-wide rather than either city. A capital usually sits above its own national average, and often by more than the gap between these two figures, so it cannot tell you which city will cost you more.

Stockholm's beach strength rests on access rather than water: the sea is warmest at 17°C in August and close to freezing for much of the year. And Amsterdam's wettest months, near 85mm, are also its warmest, so summer visits come with rain.

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
Stockholm
1
1
5
11
17
21
24
22
17
10
5
3
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Stockholm
3
2
2
3
7
12
16
17
14
10
7
5
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Stockholm
37
29
27
29
34
61
60
66
53
51
47
47
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Stockholm
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Stockholm
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
6
3
1
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Amsterdam: 1991-2020 normals, De Bilt (35.3 km from centre). Stockholm: 1991-2020 normals, Stockholm Observatoriet (26.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Amsterdam is the steadier choice outside high summer. April and May bring highs of 15-18°C with rainfall down to 42mm in April, and winter holds around 6-7°C rather than freezing, though rain runs 71-85mm from June through August.

Stockholm's window is June to August, with highs of 21-24°C. Its spring is dry, 27-34mm from March to May, but cold at 5-17°C, and January highs of 1°C make a winter trip a harder proposition.

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamStockholm
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
2 h 25 m
€89-139
ARN · 36 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
1 h 20 m
€84-99
ARN · 36 km
OsloOSL, TRF
1 h 50 m
€155-209
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
1 h 5 m
€77-102
1 stop
ARN · 36 km
HelsinkiHEL
2 h 25 m
€200-244
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
1 h 10 m
€66-74
ARN · 36 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 15 m
€166-175
AMS · 12 km
3 h 15 m
€138-141
ARN · 36 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
3 h 25 m
€90-234
ARN · 36 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
6 h 20 m
€330-429
1 stop
ARN · 36 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
8 h 5 m
no fares
ARN · 36 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 30 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
10 h 25 m
€526-560
1 stop
ARN · 36 km
Punta CanaPUJ
9 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
ARN · 36 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

MeasureAmsterdamStockholm
Official languageDutchSwedish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swedish Krona (SEK)
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 m22 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsStockholm-Arlanda Airport (ARN)36 km from centre172 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamStockholm
City population921,468984,748
People per km²4,2085,260
Museums within 10 km101266
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km53
Distinct cuisines in the centre9881
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 Stockholm 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.