VacationSelector

Amsterdam or York?

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 beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

York
41
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

What matters to you?

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

The verdict

Choose Amsterdam if you want the fuller city: many times as many museums and restaurants near the centre, more to walk between, and a night-time offering several times deeper. It is also the slightly warmer of the two, reaching 23°C in July.

Choose York if you want a small city of about 208,000 that can be covered on foot, with a quieter list of things to see and drier months outside summer.

Scoreboard

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

AmsterdamYork
Beaches & swimming. Amsterdam leads by 40 points.40
AmsterdamYork
Score400
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km332
Coast distance24 km50 km
Water distance24 km—
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 29 points.29
AmsterdamYork
Score8354
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,957361
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4431
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 34 points.34
AmsterdamYork
Score8046
Museums within 10 km9818
Museums within 2 km of centre6916
Share of museums within 2 km %7089
Unesco sites within 50 km52
Nightlife. Amsterdam leads by 27 points.27
AmsterdamYork
Score7043
Drinking venues within 4 km1,543450
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,078353
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7078
Nightclubs within 4 km11414
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 27 points.27
AmsterdamYork
Score6033
Protected land share 50 km %2117
Landscape blanket share 50 km %016
Land share of disc %8295
Park area within 2 km49 hectares42 hectares
Good for families. Amsterdam leads by 25 points.25
AmsterdamYork
Score6843
Tourist attractions within 2 km7413
Park area within 2 km49 hectares42 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km33
Sights concentration. Amsterdam leads by 29 points.29
AmsterdamYork
Score6839
Notable places within 2 km19637
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Amsterdam leads by 4 points.4
AmsterdamYork
Score5854
Price level global79.284.9
Daily budget€181—
Year-round weather. Amsterdam leads by 1 points.1
AmsterdamYork
Score5756
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.1 °C6.7 °C to 20.9 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm39 mm to 66 mm
Dry months01
0255075100

Where they differ

Amsterdam has many times as many museums as York, and 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against York's 2. It also has many times as many restaurants near the centre and a somewhat wider range of kitchens, far more notable places within walking distance, and 33 beaches nearby against York's 2.

York's advantage is scale rather than range: about 208,000 people, a short list of sights inside a small centre that needs no planning to cross, 3 theme parks within reach, matching Amsterdam, and a drier calendar, with a driest month of 39mm.

Where they are alike

Weather is where the two sit closest. Amsterdam runs 6-23°C across the year against York's 7-21°C, both peak in the same summer month and both cool to much the same winter, and neither offers a settled dry season.

Value for money is the other axis with little between them, so it is unlikely to decide the trip. Beyond that the shared ground is practical: 3 theme parks within reach of each, drinking places concentrated near the centre in both, and no month with sea warm enough for easy swimming.

Which traveller are you?

Someone travelling for museums and old buildings should take Amsterdam: many times as many museums as York, 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 2, and far more notable places packed inside walking distance of the centre.

For eating and going out, Amsterdam again. It has many times as many restaurants near the centre and around three times as many places to drink, most of them close in, plus a somewhat wider spread of kitchens.

For a quiet few days covered on foot, York fits: a city of about 208,000, a compact centre, 3 theme parks within reach for children, and a driest month at 39mm.

What the numbers don't tell you

There is no daily cost figure for York in this data, so the two cannot be compared on price at all. Amsterdam's €181 a day stands on its own, and the value-for-money axis is built from a different measure that both cities do have, not from what a trip actually costs.

Amsterdam's 33 beaches also read better than they behave. The sea peaks at 19°C in August, so swimming is a question of tolerance, and the warmest months are the wettest, up to 85mm. York's driest stretch, by contrast, falls in its coldest part of the year.

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
York
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
20
18
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Amsterdam
6
5
6
8
12
15
17
19
17
15
11
8
York
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Amsterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
York
53
44
39
48
43
61
56
65
58
66
62
60
Daylight, hours per day
Amsterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
York
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Amsterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
York
2
3
4
5
6
5
6
5
4
3
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Amsterdam: 1991-2020 normals, De Bilt (35.3 km from centre). York: 1991-2020 normals, Leeming (47.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Amsterdam is the better pick from June to August, with highs of 21-23°C and the sea at its warmest, 19°C in August. Those are also its wettest months, 71-85mm each, so plan for showers rather than a dry run.

York holds up better in late winter and early spring, when it is the drier of the two: March at 39mm against 58mm in Amsterdam. Its summer peaks at 21°C in July, cooler than Amsterdam and better suited to walking than to sitting outside.

Getting there

Flying fromAmsterdamYork
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€93-112
AMS · 12 km
55 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 10 m
€130-171
AMS · 12 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 55 m
€133-166
AMS · 12 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 12 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
GenevaGVA
1 h 30 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
2 h 0 m
€179-192
AMS · 12 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
BridgetownBGI
9 h 5 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 45 m
€458-478
1 stop
AMS · 12 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
MAN · 104 km
AgadirAGA
3 h 50 m
no fares
NRN · 120 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
LBA · 39 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 12 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
MAN · 104 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

MeasureAmsterdamYork
Official languageDutchEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911112 or 999
Elevation-2 m25 m
Main airportAmsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinationsLeeds Bradford Airport (LBA)39 km from centre73 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureAmsterdamYork
City population921,468208,400
People per km²4,208766
Museums within 10 km10124
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km52
Distinct cuisines in the centre9854
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone–

Where else could you go?

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