Berlin or Amsterdam?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on sights concentration and good for families with your weighting.
Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat 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 Amsterdam if the eating is the point: roughly twice as many restaurants near the centre as Berlin and a wider spread of kitchens, plus 33 beaches within reach for a change of scene.
Choose Berlin if you want a dense walkable core, with about twice as many notable places within walking distance, more museums, and far more park space close to the centre.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Amsterdam leads by 40 points.40
| Berlin | Amsterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 40 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 17 | 33 |
| Coast distance | 142 km | 24 km |
| Water distance | — | 24 km |
Places to eat. Amsterdam leads by 13 points.13
| Berlin | Amsterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 70 | 83 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 1,117 | 1,957 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 33 | 44 |
Museums & heritage. Amsterdam leads by 1 points.1
| Berlin | Amsterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 79 | 80 |
| Museums within 10 km | 200 | 98 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 81 | 69 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 41 | 70 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 4 | 5 |
Nightlife. Berlin leads by 6 points.6
| Berlin | Amsterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 76 | 70 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 2,114 | 1,543 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 719 | 1,078 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 34 | 70 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 135 | 114 |
Nature & day trips. Amsterdam leads by 11 points.11
| Berlin | Amsterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 49 | 60 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 20 | 21 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 16 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 82 |
| Park area within 2 km | 141 hectares | 49 hectares |
Good for families. Berlin leads by 8 points.8
| Berlin | Amsterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 76 | 68 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 54 | 74 |
| Park area within 2 km | 141 hectares | 49 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 5 | 3 |
Sights concentration. Berlin leads by 16 points.16
| Berlin | Amsterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 84 | 68 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 486 | 196 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Berlin leads by 2 points.2
| Berlin | Amsterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 60 | 58 |
| Price level global | 75.9 | 79.2 |
| Daily budget | €163 | €181 |
Year-round weather. Berlin leads by 3 points.3
| Berlin | Amsterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 60 | 57 |
| Monthly daytime high | 3.7 °C to 25 °C | 6.1 °C to 23.1 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 29 mm to 76 mm | 42 mm to 85 mm |
| Dry months | 3 | 0 |
Where they differ
Amsterdam is the stronger city for eating out, with about twice as many restaurants near the centre and a somewhat wider range of kitchens. It also has some claim to swimming: 33 beaches nearby against Berlin's 17, though the sea peaks at 19°C in August and never gets properly warm.
Berlin puts far more within walking distance, with about twice as many notable places close to the centre, so more of a visit can be done on foot without transport.
Where they are alike
Both are serious museum cities: Berlin has about twice as many museums, Amsterdam keeps its own more tightly around the centre, and both sit within day-trip reach of UNESCO-listed places, 5 for Amsterdam and 4 for Berlin.
They are also close on nightlife and on year-round climate. Each has plenty of bars and clubs, with Amsterdam's clustered centrally and Berlin's spread wider, and both have cold winters, at 4-6°C in January.
Which traveller are you?
A traveller who plans days around meals should take Amsterdam: about twice as many restaurants near the centre, a wider range of kitchens, and bars and clubs mostly close in, so evenings need little transport.
Families are better served in Berlin: about three times as much park space near the centre, 5 theme parks within reach against 3, and a museum count that will outlast a week of bad weather.
For open ground and water, Amsterdam: 33 beaches nearby, 21% of the surrounding land protected and 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, though the sea tops out at 19°C.
What the numbers don't tell you
Amsterdam's 33 beaches sound like a swimming holiday, but the sea peaks at 19°C, so time in the water is short and cool, and the beaches are better read as places to walk than to swim.
The daily budget figures, €181 and €163, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels in the Netherlands and Germany, not measurements of Amsterdam or Berlin. A capital can sit well above its own country's average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so neither city is shown here to cost more than the 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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Berlin: 1991-2020 normals, Berlin / Alexanderplatz (0.9 km from centre). Amsterdam: 1991-2020 normals, De Bilt (35.3 km from centre).
Amsterdam peaks in July and August, when highs reach 23°C and the sea is at its warmest, 19°C. Rain is steady all year and those two summer months are among the wettest, at 84-85mm, so pack for showers whenever you go.
Berlin's season runs longer, April to September, with highs of 16-25°C and less rain, 29mm at the spring end and 53mm in late summer, against Amsterdam's wetter summer. The shoulder months at either end still work, while both cities fall away in winter.
Getting there
| Flying from | Berlin | Amsterdam |
|---|---|---|
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 1 h 50 m €65-126 BER · 19 km | 1 h 5 m €93-112 AMS · 12 km |
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 2 h 40 m €133-143 BER · 19 km | 3 h 15 m €166-175 AMS · 12 km |
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 40 m €102-136 BER · 19 km | 1 h 10 m €178-300 AMS · 12 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 1 h 10 m €137-154 BER · 19 km | 1 h 5 m €152-186 AMS · 12 km |
| BarcelonaBCN | 2 h 25 m €101-133 BER · 19 km | 2 h 10 m €130-171 AMS · 12 km |
| MunichMUC | 1 h 15 m €178-321 BER · 19 km | 1 h 25 m €203-231 AMS · 12 km |
| ZurichZRH | 1 h 25 m €149-251 BER · 19 km | 1 h 25 m no fares AMS · 12 km |
| New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA | 8 h 10 m €737 BER · 19 km | 7 h 35 m €512-556 1 stop AMS · 12 km |
| DubaiDXB, DWC | 6 h 5 m no fares BER · 19 km | 6 h 45 m €318-346 1 stop AMS · 12 km |
| BeijingPEK, PKX | 9 h 20 m €718-820 2 stops BER · 19 km | 9 h 55 m no fares AMS · 12 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
| Measure | Berlin | Amsterdam |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | German | Dutch |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CF230 V, 50 Hz | CF230 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 112 or 911 |
| Elevation | 34 m | -2 m |
| Main airport | Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER)19 km from centre161 non-stop destinations | Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS)12 km from centre287 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 10 days | 11 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Berlin | Amsterdam |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 3,782,202 | 921,468 |
| People per km² | 4,244 | 4,208 |
| Museums within 10 km | 158 | 101 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 4 | 5 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 86 | 98 |
| 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 Berlin or Amsterdam somewhere new.