VacationSelector

Bucharest 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

Bucharest
55
match

Wins on value for money and nightlife with your weighting.

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage 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.

BucharestRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 37 points.37
BucharestRotterdam
Score037
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km322
Coast distance198 km24 km
Water distance24 km
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 5 points.5
BucharestRotterdam
Score6772
Restaurants within 2 km of centre667862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4146
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 11 points.11
BucharestRotterdam
Score4960
Museums within 10 km7341
Museums within 2 km of centre4020
Share of museums within 2 km %5549
Unesco sites within 50 km05
Nightlife. Bucharest leads by 13 points.13
BucharestRotterdam
Score6249
Drinking venues within 4 km1,017542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre541378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5370
Nightclubs within 4 km8040
Nature & day trips. Rotterdam leads by 6 points.6
BucharestRotterdam
Score3642
Protected land share 50 km %410
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10079
Park area within 2 km133 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Bucharest leads by 6 points.6
BucharestRotterdam
Score6862
Tourist attractions within 2 km4527
Park area within 2 km133 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km28
Sights concentration. Bucharest leads by 10 points.10
BucharestRotterdam
Score6151
Notable places within 2 km13074
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bucharest leads by 27 points.27
BucharestRotterdam
Score8558
Price level global40.979.2
Daily budget€99€181
Year-round weather. Bucharest leads by 7 points.7
BucharestRotterdam
Score6356
Monthly daytime high2.8 °C to 30.5 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall33 mm to 82 mm42 mm to 85 mm
Dry months10
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
Bucharest
3
6
12
19
24
28
30
31
25
18
11
4
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Bucharest
No coastline within reach
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Bucharest
40
33
42
49
71
82
68
48
62
59
44
47
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Bucharest
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Bucharest
2
4
5
6
8
9
10
9
7
5
3
2
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. Bucharest: 1991-2020 normals, Bucuresti / Imh (10 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 fromBucharestRotterdam
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 50 m
€118-127
OTP · 18 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
3 h 35 m
€109-143
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 10 m
€72-175
OTP · 18 km
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 5 km
DublinDUB
3 h 40 m
no fares
OTP · 18 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 40 m
no fares
OTP · 18 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 30 m
€118-143
OTP · 18 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ManchesterMAN
3 h 20 m
no fares
OTP · 18 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
9 h 40 m
€669-837
1 stop
OTP · 18 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 45 m
no fares
OTP · 18 km
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 10 m
€121-131
OTP · 18 km
3 h 15 m
€140-185
RTM · 5 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 2026-09, 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

MeasureBucharestRotterdam
Official languageRomanianDutch
CurrencyRomanian Leu (RON)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 911
Elevation70 m10 m
Main airportBucharest Henri Coandă International Airport (OTP)18 km from centre123 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year17 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBucharestRotterdam
City population1,716,961664,311
People per km²7,5972,080
Museums within 10 km4140
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km05
Distinct cuisines in the centre6877
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bucharest 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. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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. 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.

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.