Hamburg 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
Wins on nightlife and sights concentration with your weighting.
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 Hamburg if you are here for the evenings and for a centre where the notable places sit within walking distance, and if you travel between May and September, when it is warmer and drier.
Choose Rotterdam if you want the coast within reach for a day at the beach, or if your trip falls in the cooler half of the year, when it is the milder of the two.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 37 points.37
| Hamburg | Rotterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 37 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 16 | 22 |
| Coast distance | 22 km | 24 km |
| Water distance | — | 24 km |
Places to eat. Hamburg leads by 1 points.1
| Hamburg | Rotterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 73 | 72 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 1,150 | 862 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 38 | 46 |
Museums & heritage. Hamburg and Rotterdam are level on 60.
| Hamburg | Rotterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 60 | 60 |
| Museums within 10 km | 94 | 41 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 50 | 20 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 53 | 49 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 1 | 5 |
Nightlife. Hamburg leads by 19 points.19
| Hamburg | Rotterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 68 | 49 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 1,339 | 542 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 834 | 378 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 62 | 70 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 119 | 40 |
Nature & day trips. Rotterdam leads by 2 points.2
| Hamburg | Rotterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 40 | 42 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 14 | 10 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 10 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 99 | 79 |
| Park area within 2 km | 89 hectares | 61 hectares |
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 2 points.2
| Hamburg | Rotterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 60 | 62 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 40 | 27 |
| Park area within 2 km | 89 hectares | 61 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 1 | 8 |
Sights concentration. Hamburg leads by 8 points.8
| Hamburg | Rotterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 59 | 51 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 118 | 74 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Hamburg leads by 2 points.2
| Hamburg | Rotterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 60 | 58 |
| Price level global | 75.9 | 79.2 |
| Daily budget | €163 | €181 |
Year-round weather. Rotterdam leads by 1 points.1
| Hamburg | Rotterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 55 | 56 |
| Monthly daytime high | 4.3 °C to 23.2 °C | 6.2 °C to 22.1 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 39 mm to 82 mm | 42 mm to 85 mm |
| Dry months | 1 | 0 |
Where they differ
Hamburg is the city for evenings out: many more places to drink and considerably more clubs, nearly all near the centre, so you can move between them on foot. By day the centre is denser too, with more of the notable places inside walking range and more restaurants close in.
Rotterdam has the water. It has 22 beaches nearby against Hamburg's 16, and the sea reaches 19°C in August: a late-summer dip rather than a swimming holiday, since neither has a month at 21°C or more.
Where they are alike
Museums and heritage come out level by different routes: Hamburg's weight is in the museums inside the city, Rotterdam's in the listed places within day-trip reach. Either way, several days of indoor sightseeing hold up.
Eating out is close too: one has more restaurants near the centre, the other a broader spread of kitchens. Both are northern cities with cool wet winters and mild summers, both suit families, and the national daily budget estimates, €163 and €181, sit close together.
Which traveller are you?
A night-out traveller should pick Hamburg. It has about twice as many places to drink and roughly three times as many nightclubs, and they cluster near the centre, so an evening needs little planning.
Families lean to Rotterdam, which has 8 theme parks within reach against Hamburg's 1. Hamburg answers with more tourist attractions and more park space near the centre, better if you would rather stay in the city.
A heritage traveller splits by range. Hamburg has about twice as many museums and twice as many notable places within walking distance; Rotterdam puts 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 1, so plan excursions.
What the numbers don't tell you
Rotterdam's coastal edge is thinner than it looks. Neither city has a month of sea at 21°C or more, and Rotterdam's warmest water, 19°C, arrives only at the end of summer, so its beaches suit a day out rather than a swimming trip. Those same warm months are also the wettest, July at 85mm.
The daily budget figure is a national estimate of restaurant and hotel prices, not a measurement of either city. A large city can sit far from its own country's average, so the small gap between the two national figures tells you nothing about which trip costs more.
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. Hamburg: 1991-2020 normals, Hamburg Airport (9.3 km from centre). Rotterdam: 1993-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Rotterdam Airport Zestienhoven (3.9 km from centre).
Hamburg is the better bet from May to September, with highs of 18-23°C and less summer rain, 77mm in August against Rotterdam's 84mm, so it is the stronger summer trip.
Rotterdam holds up better from October to March, with winter highs of 6-7°C against Hamburg's 4-5°C, but it pays in rain: its autumn and winter months sit near 80mm each, where Hamburg's run lower. Hamburg's driest month is April, at 39mm.
Getting there
| Flying from | Hamburg | Rotterdam |
|---|---|---|
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 30 m €155-168 1 stop HAM · 9 km | 1 h 10 m €178-300 AMS · 47 km |
| MadridMAD | 2 h 45 m €193 HAM · 9 km | 2 h 25 m €160-183 AMS · 47 km |
| DublinDUB | 1 h 55 m no fares HAM · 9 km | 1 h 35 m €69-96 AMS · 47 km |
| DubaiDXB, DWC | 6 h 25 m €357-416 HAM · 9 km | 6 h 45 m €318-346 1 stop AMS · 47 km |
| CopenhagenCPH | 1 h 0 m no fares HAM · 9 km | 1 h 25 m €171-212 1 stop AMS · 47 km |
| MunichMUC | 1 h 20 m €195-270 HAM · 9 km | 1 h 25 m €203-231 AMS · 47 km |
| ManchesterMAN | 1 h 35 m no fares HAM · 9 km | 1 h 15 m €145-187 AMS · 47 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 1 h 10 m no fares HAM · 9 km | 1 h 5 m €152-186 AMS · 47 km |
| StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST | 1 h 40 m €114-154 HAM · 9 km | 2 h 0 m €156-208 AMS · 47 km |
| PalmaPMI | 2 h 35 m no fares HAM · 9 km | 2 h 20 m no fares 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 2026-08 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 | Hamburg | Rotterdam |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | 6 m | 10 m |
| Main airport | Hamburg Helmut Schmidt Airport (HAM)9 km from centre119 non-stop destinations | Rotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 10 days | 11 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Hamburg | Rotterdam |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 1,910,160 | 664,311 |
| People per km² | 2,530 | 2,080 |
| Museums within 10 km | 77 | 40 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 1 | 5 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 83 | 77 |
| 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 Hamburg or Rotterdam somewhere new.