VacationSelector

Boston or Rotterdam?

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, 1 point apart

Boston
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on museums & heritage and value for money with your weighting.

What matters to you?

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

Scoreboard

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

BostonRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 23 points.23
BostonRotterdam
Score6037
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km6822
Coast distance1 km24 km
Water distance1 km24 km
Places to eat. Boston leads by 1 points.1
BostonRotterdam
Score7372
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,452862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3246
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 17 points.17
BostonRotterdam
Score4360
Museums within 10 km7941
Museums within 2 km of centre2720
Share of museums within 2 km %3449
Unesco sites within 50 km05
Nightlife. Boston leads by 9 points.9
BostonRotterdam
Score5849
Drinking venues within 4 km886542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre513378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5870
Nightclubs within 4 km4340
Nature & day trips. Boston leads by 11 points.11
BostonRotterdam
Score5342
Protected land share 50 km %1210
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7779
Park area within 2 km116 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 9 points.9
BostonRotterdam
Score5362
Tourist attractions within 2 km2827
Park area within 2 km116 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km08
Sights concentration. Boston leads by 7 points.7
BostonRotterdam
Score5851
Notable places within 2 km11174
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rotterdam leads by 15 points.15
BostonRotterdam
Score4358
Price level global10079.2
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. Boston and Rotterdam are level on 56.
BostonRotterdam
Score5656
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm42 mm to 85 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

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
Boston
3
4
8
14
19
25
28
27
23
17
11
6
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
Rotterdam
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. Boston: 1991-2020 normals, Boston Logan International (3.5 km from centre). Rotterdam: 1993-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Rotterdam Airport Zestienhoven (3.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonRotterdam
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
DublinDUB
6 h 20 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
7 h 5 m
€570
BOS · 4 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
CopenhagenCPH
7 h 35 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
13 h 15 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 5 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 20 m
€176-196
BOS · 4 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
Punta CanaPUJ
3 h 50 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
13 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 47 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

MeasureBostonRotterdam
Official languageDutch
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112 or 911
Elevation43 m10 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonRotterdam
City population675,647664,311
People per km²2,9102,080
Museums within 10 km5140
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km05
Distinct cuisines in the centre7477
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Boston or Rotterdam 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). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.