VacationSelector

Antwerp or Hamburg?

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, 2 points apart

Antwerp
51
match

Wins on museums & heritage and year-round weather with your weighting.

Hamburg
53
match

Wins on good for families and nightlife 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 Antwerp if the trip is built around museums and older buildings: they sit close together in the centre, and there are 9 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach.

Choose Hamburg if you want more to do after dark and more with children in tow: roughly twice the bars and clubs, three times the attractions near the centre, and more green space to walk off an afternoon.

Scoreboard

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

AntwerpHamburg
Beaches & swimming. Antwerp and Hamburg are level on 0.
AntwerpHamburg
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km116
Coast distance21 km22 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Antwerp leads by 2 points.2
AntwerpHamburg
Score7573
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1641,150
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4238
Museums & heritage. Antwerp leads by 9 points.9
AntwerpHamburg
Score6960
Museums within 10 km4194
Museums within 2 km of centre2750
Share of museums within 2 km %6653
Unesco sites within 50 km91
Nightlife. Hamburg leads by 9 points.9
AntwerpHamburg
Score5968
Drinking venues within 4 km8661,339
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre657834
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7662
Nightclubs within 4 km73119
Nature & day trips. Hamburg leads by 6 points.6
AntwerpHamburg
Score3440
Protected land share 50 km %714
Landscape blanket share 50 km %010
Land share of disc %8099
Park area within 2 km53 hectares89 hectares
Good for families. Hamburg leads by 14 points.14
AntwerpHamburg
Score4660
Tourist attractions within 2 km1440
Park area within 2 km53 hectares89 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Hamburg leads by 5 points.5
AntwerpHamburg
Score5459
Notable places within 2 km88118
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Antwerp and Hamburg are level on 60.
AntwerpHamburg
Score6060
Price level global76.275.9
Daily budget€180€163
Year-round weather. Antwerp leads by 3 points.3
AntwerpHamburg
Score5855
Monthly daytime high6.5 °C to 23.2 °C4.3 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 mm39 mm to 82 mm
Dry months01
0255075100

Where they differ

Antwerp's museums and older buildings cluster tightly around the centre, coverable on foot, and the wider region holds far more UNESCO-listed sites within day-trip reach. It has 3 theme parks within range against Hamburg's 1, and runs a little warmer through the year.

Hamburg holds roughly twice the museums, and after dark roughly twice the bars and clubs. With children it offers around three times the attractions near the centre and twice the park space, with 14% of the surrounding land protected against 7%.

Where they are alike

Neither is a place to swim. No month brings sea at 21°C or more, so a beach day is not really part of either trip.

Beyond that, they are close on eating out, with a comparable spread of restaurants and kitchens near the centre, and both have centres you can cross on foot with most of the notable places inside that walk. Summers match, peaking at 23°C, and the national price levels behind them sit close, €180 in Belgium and €163 in Germany.

Which traveller are you?

For a museum-led long weekend, Antwerp: its collections sit close enough together to cover on foot, and the wider region has 9 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Hamburg's 1.

For late nights, Hamburg: about twice as many bars and twice as many clubs as Antwerp, most of them near the centre, so an evening does not need to be planned around transport.

For families, Hamburg again: roughly three times the attractions near the centre and double the park space, plus 14% of the surrounding land protected for a day out of the city. Antwerp counters with 3 theme parks within reach against Hamburg's 1.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €180 for Belgium and €163 for Germany, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels, not measurements of either city. A heavily visited city can sit well above its own country average, by more than the gap between these two figures.

Beach counts mislead too. Hamburg has 16 beaches nearby, but neither city has a month with sea at 21°C or more, so neither is a swimming destination. Nor is the warmest weather the driest: in both, the strongest summer months also carry the heaviest rainfall 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
Antwerp
7
8
11
15
19
21
23
23
20
15
10
7
Hamburg
4
5
9
14
18
21
23
23
19
14
8
5
Rainfall, mm
Antwerp
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
Hamburg
67
55
57
39
58
74
82
77
65
63
61
72
Daylight, hours per day
Antwerp
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Hamburg
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Antwerp
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1
Hamburg
1
2
4
6
7
7
7
7
5
4
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Antwerp: 1991-2020 normals, Antwerpen / Deurne (5.2 km from centre). Hamburg: 1991-2020 normals, Hamburg Airport (9.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Antwerp holds up better through the shoulder and colder months. Spring highs reach 15-19°C, and January stays near 7°C against Hamburg's 4°C, so a winter break feels less raw. Its wettest stretch comes late in summer, 90mm in August.

Hamburg is marginally the stronger pick at the height of summer, July and August, when both reach 23°C but Hamburg sheds a little of the August rain. Its April, at 39mm, is the driest month on either calendar, useful if you plan to walk.

Getting there

Flying fromAntwerpHamburg
MunichMUC
1 h 20 m
no fares
BRU · 36 km
1 h 20 m
€195-270
HAM · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
€138-162
2 stops
BRU · 36 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
HAM · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 36 km
1 h 35 m
€89-225
HAM · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 36 km
3 h 0 m
€178-237
HAM · 9 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 36 km
2 h 45 m
€193
HAM · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 36 km
2 h 25 m
€127-153
HAM · 9 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 45 m
€93-156
BRU · 36 km
1 h 35 m
€167-214
1 stop
HAM · 9 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
BRU · 36 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
HAM · 9 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 45 m
€179-232
1 stop
BRU · 36 km
3 h 35 m
€162-200
HAM · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 36 km
6 h 25 m
€357-416
HAM · 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 2026-09 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

MeasureAntwerpHamburg
Official languageFrench, German, DutchGerman
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation7 m6 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)36 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsHamburg Helmut Schmidt Airport (HAM)9 km from centre119 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureAntwerpHamburg
City population529,2471,910,160
People per km²2,5422,530
Museums within 10 km3877
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km91
Distinct cuisines in the centre8083

Where else could you go?

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