VacationSelector

Amsterdam or Washington DC?

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 museums & heritage with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

AmsterdamWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Amsterdam leads by 22 points.22
AmsterdamWashington DC
Score4018
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km331
Coast distance24 km34 km
Water distance24 km34 km
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 6 points.6
AmsterdamWashington DC
Score8377
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,9571,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4436
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 25 points.25
AmsterdamWashington DC
Score8055
Museums within 10 km9883
Museums within 2 km of centre6955
Share of museums within 2 km %7066
Unesco sites within 50 km50
Nightlife. Amsterdam leads by 9 points.9
AmsterdamWashington DC
Score7061
Drinking venues within 4 km1,5431,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,078593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7058
Nightclubs within 4 km11454
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 18 points.18
AmsterdamWashington DC
Score6042
Protected land share 50 km %2110
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %8294
Park area within 2 km49 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Amsterdam leads by 30 points.30
AmsterdamWashington DC
Score6838
Tourist attractions within 2 km747
Park area within 2 km49 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 8 points.8
AmsterdamWashington DC
Score6876
Notable places within 2 km196305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Amsterdam leads by 15 points.15
AmsterdamWashington DC
Score5843
Price level global79.2100
Daily budget€181—
Year-round weather. Washington DC leads by 5 points.5
AmsterdamWashington DC
Score5762
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm65 mm to 108 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
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Washington DC
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). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamWashington DC
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
9 h 0 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 45 m
€458-478
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 15 m
€166-175
AMS · 12 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DetroitDTW, DET, YIP
8 h 5 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 25 m
€226-227
IAD · 37 km
MinneapolisMSP, STP
8 h 30 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 45 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
13 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 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

MeasureAmsterdamWashington DC
Official languageDutch–
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911911
Elevation-2 m72 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamWashington DC
City population921,468689,545
People per km²4,2083,896
Museums within 10 km10199
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km50
Distinct cuisines in the centre9882
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone3 months

Where else could you go?

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