VacationSelector

Budapest or Rotterdam?

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

Your match

Budapest
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on nightlife and value for money with your weighting.

Rotterdam
54
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.

Scoreboard

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

BudapestRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 37 points.37
BudapestRotterdam
Score037
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km622
Coast distance10,000 km24 km
Water distance—24 km
Places to eat. Budapest leads by 5 points.5
BudapestRotterdam
Score7772
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,699862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3546
Museums & heritage. Budapest leads by 4 points.4
BudapestRotterdam
Score6460
Museums within 10 km14441
Museums within 2 km of centre6420
Share of museums within 2 km %4449
Unesco sites within 50 km15
Nightlife. Budapest leads by 23 points.23
BudapestRotterdam
Score7249
Drinking venues within 4 km1,765542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,168378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6670
Nightclubs within 4 km9740
Nature & day trips. Rotterdam leads by 2 points.2
BudapestRotterdam
Score4042
Protected land share 50 km %810
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10079
Park area within 2 km111 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Budapest leads by 9 points.9
BudapestRotterdam
Score7162
Tourist attractions within 2 km7527
Park area within 2 km111 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km18
Sights concentration. Budapest leads by 18 points.18
BudapestRotterdam
Score6951
Notable places within 2 km20674
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Budapest leads by 22 points.22
BudapestRotterdam
Score8058
Price level global4879.2
Daily budget€104€181
Year-round weather. Budapest leads by 8 points.8
BudapestRotterdam
Score6456
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 27.9 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 75 mm42 mm to 85 mm
Dry months50
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
Budapest
4
7
11
17
22
26
27
28
22
16
9
4
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Budapest
No coastline within reach
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Budapest
29
27
30
37
67
67
75
60
48
41
48
39
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Budapest
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Budapest
2
4
5
7
9
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. Budapest: 1991-2020 normals, Budapest Met Center (2.1 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 fromBudapestRotterdam
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 10 m
€97-114
BUD · 18 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
3 h 0 m
€84-154
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€63-91
BUD · 18 km
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 5 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 50 m
€60-87
BUD · 18 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
DublinDUB
2 h 55 m
€121-132
1 stop
BUD · 18 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 25 m
€276-394
2 stops
BUD · 18 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 35 m
no fares
BUD · 18 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 15 m
€64-112
BUD · 18 km
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
10 h 30 m
€698-839
3 stops
BUD · 18 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
9 h 5 m
no fares
BUD · 18 km
7 h 45 m
€458-478
1 stop
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

MeasureBudapestRotterdam
Official languageHungarianDutch
CurrencyForint (HUF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 911
Elevation117 m10 m
Main airportBudapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport (BUD)18 km from centre155 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBudapestRotterdam
City population1,685,209664,311
People per km²3,2092,080
Museums within 10 km8140
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km15
Distinct cuisines in the centre8677
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 Budapest 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.