VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Sydney?

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 museums & heritage and sights concentration with your weighting.

Sydney
64
match

Wins on year-round weather and beaches & swimming 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.

AmsterdamSydney
Beaches & swimming. Sydney leads by 20 points.20
AmsterdamSydney
Score4060
Swim season months06
Beaches 10 km33160
Coast distance24 km7 km
Water distance24 km7 km
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 5 points.5
AmsterdamSydney
Score8378
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,9572,205
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4431
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 29 points.29
AmsterdamSydney
Score8051
Museums within 10 km9844
Museums within 2 km of centre6920
Share of museums within 2 km %7045
Unesco sites within 50 km52
Nightlife. Sydney leads by 5 points.5
AmsterdamSydney
Score7075
Drinking venues within 4 km1,5432,050
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,0781,405
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7069
Nightclubs within 4 km114120
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 2 points.2
AmsterdamSydney
Score6058
Protected land share 50 km %2110
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8252
Park area within 2 km49 hectares115 hectares
Good for families. Amsterdam leads by 4 points.4
AmsterdamSydney
Score6864
Tourist attractions within 2 km7437
Park area within 2 km49 hectares115 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 8 points.8
AmsterdamSydney
Score6860
Notable places within 2 km196123
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Amsterdam leads by 8 points.8
AmsterdamSydney
Score5850
Price level global79.290.2
Daily budget€181—
Year-round weather. Sydney leads by 24 points.24
AmsterdamSydney
Score5781
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C17.7 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm55 mm to 121 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
Sydney
28
27
26
23
21
18
18
19
22
24
25
26
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Sydney
23
23
23
22
21
20
19
18
18
19
20
21
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Sydney
80
116
90
95
89
121
70
63
57
55
71
68
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sydney
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Sydney
8
6
7
7
7
6
7
8
8
8
7
8

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Amsterdam: 1991-2020 normals, De Bilt (35.3 km from centre). Sydney: 1991-2020 normals, Sydney Airport (3.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamSydney
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
20 h 40 m
€931-1073
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
Denpasar (Bali)DPS
15 h 0 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
6 h 5 m
€460-617
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 15 m
€166-175
AMS · 12 km
18 h 15 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 45 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
10 h 30 m
€548-574
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
14 h 50 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
13 h 0 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
8 h 5 m
€498-549
1 stop
SYD · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 12 km
20 h 35 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
19 h 30 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
14 h 50 m
no fares
SYD · 9 km
SantiagoSCL
14 h 45 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
SYD · 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

MeasureAmsterdamSydney
Official languageDutchEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Australian Dollar (AUD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzI230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+10, UTC+11 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911000
Elevation-2 m6 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsSydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (SYD)9 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamSydney
City population921,4685,450,496
People per km²4,208449
Museums within 10 km10138
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km52
Distinct cuisines in the centre9879
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone6 months

Where else could you go?

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