VacationSelector

Antwerp or The Hague?

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

Your match

Antwerp
51
match

Wins on nightlife and museums & heritage with your weighting.

The Hague
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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 denser evening out, with more places to drink and dance close to the centre, a wider run of restaurants, and slightly warmer summers peaking around 23°C.

Choose The Hague if the sea matters: 34 beaches nearby, more park space near the centre, and more theme parks within reach for a trip with children.

Scoreboard

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

AntwerpThe Hague
Beaches & swimming. The Hague leads by 60 points.60
AntwerpThe Hague
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km134
Coast distance21 km3 km
Water distance—3 km
Places to eat. Antwerp leads by 5 points.5
AntwerpThe Hague
Score7570
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,164798
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4243
Museums & heritage. Antwerp leads by 7 points.7
AntwerpThe Hague
Score6962
Museums within 10 km4146
Museums within 2 km of centre2726
Share of museums within 2 km %6657
Unesco sites within 50 km94
Nightlife. Antwerp leads by 13 points.13
AntwerpThe Hague
Score5946
Drinking venues within 4 km866511
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre657288
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7656
Nightclubs within 4 km7319
Nature & day trips. The Hague leads by 20 points.20
AntwerpThe Hague
Score3454
Protected land share 50 km %78
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8056
Park area within 2 km53 hectares159 hectares
Good for families. The Hague leads by 10 points.10
AntwerpThe Hague
Score4656
Tourist attractions within 2 km1410
Park area within 2 km53 hectares159 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km37
Sights concentration. Antwerp and The Hague are level on 54.
AntwerpThe Hague
Score5454
Notable places within 2 km8886
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Antwerp leads by 2 points.2
AntwerpThe Hague
Score6058
Price level global76.279.2
Daily budget€180€181
Year-round weather. Antwerp leads by 4 points.4
AntwerpThe Hague
Score5854
Monthly daytime high6.5 °C to 23.2 °C6.1 °C to 21.3 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 mm42 mm to 85 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Antwerp is the stronger night out: roughly twice as many places to drink and about three times as many nightclubs, and most of them sit near the centre, so an evening needs little planning. Its coast amounts to a single beach.

The Hague has 34 beaches within reach and sea that peaks at 19°C in August. It also has about three times as much park space near the centre, and slightly more protected land around it, 8% against 7%.

Where they are alike

Both put a similar number of notable places within walking distance of the centre, so either city works as a short trip on foot without much use of transport.

They are close in other respects too. Both national price levels sit around €180 a day. Summers are mild rather than hot, with highs of 23°C in Antwerp and 21°C in The Hague, and both cities offer a similar range of kitchens.

Which traveller are you?

A couple after evenings out will prefer Antwerp, which has many more places to drink and clubs than The Hague, most of them near enough to the centre to walk between, and somewhat more restaurants close by.

A family with young children is better served by The Hague: 34 beaches within reach, noticeably more park space near the centre, and 7 theme parks within reach against Antwerp's 3.

Someone travelling for museums and older architecture should take Antwerp, where the collections sit tightly around the centre and 9 UNESCO-listed places lie within day-trip reach against The Hague's 4.

What the numbers don't tell you

The Hague's beaches are real, but the water peaks at 19°C in August, which is the month most people go, so the coast can be busy at exactly the point it is warm enough to use. Neither city has a month with sea at 21°C or more.

The daily budget figures, around €180, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels, not measurements of either city. The gap between the two countries is small, and a capital or a heavily visited city can sit further from its own national average than the two figures sit from each other.

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
The Hague
6
7
9
13
16
19
21
21
18
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Antwerp
No coastline within reach
The Hague
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Antwerp
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
The Hague
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Antwerp
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
The Hague
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Antwerp
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1
The Hague
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). The Hague: 1991-2020 normals, Valkenburg (13.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Antwerp is the better bet across the warm half of the year, with highs of 19-23°C from May to September, slightly above The Hague's, and a drier start to autumn, 67mm against 78mm. April is the driest month in both, 47mm here.

The Hague earns its place in high summer, when the sea reaches 18-19°C in August and rain is a touch lighter there, 84mm against 90mm. Its autumn is wetter.

Getting there

Flying fromAntwerpThe Hague
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 36 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 40 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 36 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 40 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 35 m
€117-136
1 stop
BRU · 36 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 40 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 36 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 40 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 36 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 40 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 20 m
no fares
CRL · 85 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 40 km
CuracaoCUR
9 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 123 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 40 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 10 m
€63-138
BRU · 36 km
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 40 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 36 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 40 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 15 m
no fares
BRU · 36 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 40 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

MeasureAntwerpThe Hague
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 m1 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)36 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)16 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAntwerpThe Hague
City population529,247548,320
People per km²2,5425,589
Museums within 10 km3854
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km94
Distinct cuisines in the centre8077
Swim season, months above 21 °C–None

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Antwerp or The Hague 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.