VacationSelector

Maastricht or Ottawa?

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, 2 points apart

Maastricht
41
match

Wins on museums & heritage and year-round weather with your weighting.

Ottawa
43
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife 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.

MaastrichtOttawa
Beaches & swimming. Maastricht and Ottawa are level on 0.
MaastrichtOttawa
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km69
Coast distance118 km423 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Ottawa leads by 16 points.16
MaastrichtOttawa
Score4864
Restaurants within 2 km of centre338684
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2234
Museums & heritage. Maastricht leads by 21 points.21
MaastrichtOttawa
Score5332
Museums within 10 km2315
Museums within 2 km of centre138
Share of museums within 2 km %5753
Unesco sites within 50 km51
Nightlife. Ottawa leads by 14 points.14
MaastrichtOttawa
Score3044
Drinking venues within 4 km223432
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre182303
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8270
Nightclubs within 4 km1335
Nature & day trips. Ottawa leads by 4 points.4
MaastrichtOttawa
Score3741
Protected land share 50 km %198
Landscape blanket share 50 km %110
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km33 hectares122 hectares
Good for families. Maastricht and Ottawa are level on 46.
MaastrichtOttawa
Score4646
Tourist attractions within 2 km1511
Park area within 2 km33 hectares122 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km51
Sights concentration. Ottawa leads by 14 points.14
MaastrichtOttawa
Score3650
Notable places within 2 km3271
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Maastricht leads by 4 points.4
MaastrichtOttawa
Score5854
Price level global79.284
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. Maastricht leads by 6 points.6
MaastrichtOttawa
Score5953
Monthly daytime high5.7 °C to 23.8 °C-4.9 °C to 27 °C
Monthly rainfall41 mm to 84 mm53 mm to 94 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
Maastricht
6
7
11
15
19
22
24
24
20
15
10
6
Ottawa
-5
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
14
6
-2
Rainfall, mm
Maastricht
64
58
55
41
58
69
73
84
58
65
62
74
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
Daylight, hours per day
Maastricht
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Ottawa
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Maastricht
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Ottawa
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Maastricht: 1991-2020 normals, Maastricht Airport Zuid Limburg (10 km from centre). Ottawa: 1991-2020 normals, Ottawa CDA RCS (5.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMaastrichtOttawa
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 10 m
no fares
EIN · 70 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 10 m
€421
BRU · 85 km
50 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
8 h 30 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
8 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
HalifaxYHZ
6 h 30 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
1 h 45 m
€260-457
1 stop
YOW · 12 km
Montego BayMBJ
10 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 90 km
4 h 10 m
no fares
YOW · 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 2026-09 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

MeasureMaastrichtOttawa
Official languageDutchFrench, English
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911911
Elevation49 m70 m
Main airportMaastricht Aachen Airport (MST)9 km from centre5 non-stop destinationsOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMaastrichtOttawa
City population120,2271,017,449
People per km²2,000366
Museums within 10 km2120
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km51
Distinct cuisines in the centre3362

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Maastricht or Ottawa 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). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.