VacationSelector

Antwerp or Maastricht?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Antwerp
✓ Best match
51
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Maastricht
41
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

The verdict

Choose Antwerp if you want the trip to happen in the city itself: more restaurants and a wider range of kitchens, far more bars and clubs, and most of the notable places within walking distance of the centre.

Choose Maastricht if you want a smaller base with more countryside around it, 19% of the surrounding land protected, and more theme parks within reach for children.

Scoreboard

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

AntwerpMaastricht
Beaches & swimming. Antwerp and Maastricht are level on 0.
AntwerpMaastricht
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km16
Coast distance21 km118 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Antwerp leads by 27 points.27
AntwerpMaastricht
Score7548
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,164338
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4222
Museums & heritage. Antwerp leads by 16 points.16
AntwerpMaastricht
Score6953
Museums within 10 km4123
Museums within 2 km of centre2713
Share of museums within 2 km %6657
Unesco sites within 50 km95
Nightlife. Antwerp leads by 29 points.29
AntwerpMaastricht
Score5930
Drinking venues within 4 km866223
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre657182
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7682
Nightclubs within 4 km7313
Nature & day trips. Maastricht leads by 3 points.3
AntwerpMaastricht
Score3437
Protected land share 50 km %719
Landscape blanket share 50 km %011
Land share of disc %80100
Park area within 2 km53 hectares33 hectares
Good for families. Antwerp and Maastricht are level on 46.
AntwerpMaastricht
Score4646
Tourist attractions within 2 km1415
Park area within 2 km53 hectares33 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km35
Sights concentration. Antwerp leads by 18 points.18
AntwerpMaastricht
Score5436
Notable places within 2 km8832
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Antwerp leads by 2 points.2
AntwerpMaastricht
Score6058
Price level global76.279.2
Daily budget€180€181
Year-round weather. Maastricht leads by 1 points.1
AntwerpMaastricht
Score5859
Monthly daytime high6.5 °C to 23.2 °C5.7 °C to 23.8 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 mm41 mm to 84 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Antwerp has about three times as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens. It also has far more bars and clubs, most of them near the centre, a deeper museum offering, and many more notable places within walking distance, plus 9 UNESCO-listed sites within day-trip reach against Maastricht's 5.

Maastricht's advantage is what lies around it: 19% of the land nearby is protected against 7% around Antwerp, and there are 5 theme parks within reach against 3.

Where they are alike

Families are served about equally: a similar number of tourist attractions near the centre in each, with Antwerp offering more park space close in and Maastricht more theme parks within reach.

The weather works the same way in each: daytime highs of about 7-23°C across the year, and no month at 40mm of rain or less. Swimming is not a reason to pick either, since neither has a month of sea at 21°C or more.

Which traveller are you?

A couple planning evenings out should take Antwerp: about three times as many restaurants near the centre, a wider spread of kitchens, and far more bars and clubs, nearly all within reach on foot.

A family with young children will find Maastricht the easier base: 5 theme parks within reach against Antwerp's 3, and 19% of the surrounding land protected, which makes days out of the city straightforward.

Anyone travelling for museums and old streets should choose Antwerp, with more museums, clustered near the centre, and 9 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Maastricht's 5.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €180 for Belgium and €181 for the Netherlands, are national price levels rather than measurements of either city. A city can sit well above or below its country's average, by more than the gap between the two national figures, so neither says which trip costs more.

Warmth and dry weather do not arrive together here. Neither city has a month at 40mm of rain or less, and the wettest months fall in late summer, so the warmest weeks carry the year's heaviest rain. Beach counts nearby are no guide either, since neither has a month of sea at 21°C or more.

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
Maastricht
6
7
11
15
19
22
24
24
20
15
10
6
Rainfall, mm
Antwerp
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
Maastricht
64
58
55
41
58
69
73
84
58
65
62
74
Daylight, hours per day
Antwerp
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Maastricht
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Antwerp
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1
Maastricht
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Antwerp: 1991-2020 normals, Antwerpen / Deurne (5.2 km from centre). Maastricht: 1991-2020 normals, Maastricht Airport Zuid Limburg (10 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Antwerp's warm stretch runs May to September, with highs of 19-23°C. The wet end is late summer, 90mm in August, so June suits better than the peak.

Maastricht is marginally warmer at the peak, 24°C in July, and drier in every month of the year, with 41mm in April its lightest. That matters most in spring and autumn, when a drier day is the difference between walking and waiting indoors. Winter is much the same in both, near 6-7°C.

Getting there

Flying fromAntwerpMaastricht
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 36 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 36 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EIN · 70 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 36 km
2 h 0 m
€148-192
1 stop
EIN · 70 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 36 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
EIN · 70 km
BudapestBUD
2 h 0 m
€51-84
CRL · 85 km
1 h 55 m
€106-231
EIN · 70 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 36 km
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 85 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 36 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
EIN · 70 km
CuracaoCUR
9 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 123 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
DUS · 90 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 36 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 36 km
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 85 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

MeasureAntwerpMaastricht
Official languageFrench, German, DutchDutch
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 or 911
Elevation7 m49 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)36 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsMaastricht Aachen Airport (MST)9 km from centre5 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAntwerpMaastricht
City population529,247120,227
People per km²2,5422,000
Museums within 10 km3821
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km95
Distinct cuisines in the centre8033

Where else could you go?

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