VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Valletta?

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 places to eat and nightlife with your weighting.

Valletta
60
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

AmsterdamValletta
Beaches & swimming. Valletta leads by 37 points.37
AmsterdamValletta
Score4077
Swim season months06
Beaches 10 km3322
Coast distance24 km0 km
Water distance24 km0 km
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 25 points.25
AmsterdamValletta
Score8358
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,957416
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4435
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 19 points.19
AmsterdamValletta
Score8061
Museums within 10 km9846
Museums within 2 km of centre6929
Share of museums within 2 km %7063
Unesco sites within 50 km53
Nightlife. Amsterdam leads by 23 points.23
AmsterdamValletta
Score7047
Drinking venues within 4 km1,543522
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,078250
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7048
Nightclubs within 4 km11427
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 14 points.14
AmsterdamValletta
Score6046
Protected land share 50 km %21—
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %826
Park area within 2 km49 hectares24 hectares
Good for families. Amsterdam leads by 22 points.22
AmsterdamValletta
Score6846
Tourist attractions within 2 km7432
Park area within 2 km49 hectares24 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 7 points.7
AmsterdamValletta
Score6861
Notable places within 2 km196133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Valletta leads by 11 points.11
AmsterdamValletta
Score5869
Price level global79.262.8
Daily budget€181€129
Year-round weather. Valletta leads by 22 points.22
AmsterdamValletta
Score5779
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C15.7 °C to 31.9 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm0 mm to 90 mm
Dry months06
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
Valletta
16
16
17
20
24
29
32
32
29
25
21
17
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Valletta
16
15
15
16
19
22
25
27
26
24
21
18
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Valletta
80
72
39
19
10
5
0
10
63
74
90
85
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Valletta
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Valletta
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Amsterdam: 1991-2020 normals, De Bilt (35.3 km from centre). Valletta: 1991-2020 normals, Luqa (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamValletta
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
3 h 10 m
€91-131
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 10 m
€202-212
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
1 h 30 m
€37-71
MLA · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 12 km
2 h 45 m
€99-132
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 35 m
€106-155
AMS · 12 km
2 h 5 m
€62-92
MLA · 6 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 12 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 15 m
€166-175
AMS · 12 km
2 h 15 m
€177-222
MLA · 6 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
2 h 5 m
€56-95
MLA · 6 km
MunichMUC
1 h 25 m
€203-231
AMS · 12 km
2 h 20 m
€165-259
MLA · 6 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
9 h 20 m
no fares
MLA · 6 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

MeasureAmsterdamValletta
Official languageDutchEnglish, Maltese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911112
Elevation-2 m56 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsMalta International Airport (MLA)6 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamValletta
City population921,4686,444
People per km²4,2088,055
Museums within 10 km10115
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km53
Distinct cuisines in the centre9855
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 Valletta 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.