VacationSelector

Maastricht or Rotterdam?

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

Your match

Maastricht
41
match

Wins on year-round weather with your weighting.

Rotterdam
✓ Best match
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat 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 Maastricht if a small city of 120,000 people suits you and the day out matters more than the night in: it runs slightly warmer through the year and has more protected countryside on its doorstep.

Choose Rotterdam if you want range: far more restaurants and kitchens, twice the museums, more to do with children, and coast within reach.

Scoreboard

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

MaastrichtRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 37 points.37
MaastrichtRotterdam
Score037
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km622
Coast distance118 km24 km
Water distance—24 km
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 24 points.24
MaastrichtRotterdam
Score4872
Restaurants within 2 km of centre338862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2246
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 7 points.7
MaastrichtRotterdam
Score5360
Museums within 10 km2341
Museums within 2 km of centre1320
Share of museums within 2 km %5749
Unesco sites within 50 km55
Nightlife. Rotterdam leads by 19 points.19
MaastrichtRotterdam
Score3049
Drinking venues within 4 km223542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre182378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8270
Nightclubs within 4 km1340
Nature & day trips. Rotterdam leads by 5 points.5
MaastrichtRotterdam
Score3742
Protected land share 50 km %1910
Landscape blanket share 50 km %110
Land share of disc %10079
Park area within 2 km33 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 16 points.16
MaastrichtRotterdam
Score4662
Tourist attractions within 2 km1527
Park area within 2 km33 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km58
Sights concentration. Rotterdam leads by 15 points.15
MaastrichtRotterdam
Score3651
Notable places within 2 km3274
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Maastricht and Rotterdam are level on 58.
MaastrichtRotterdam
Score5858
Price level global79.279.2
Daily budget€181€181
Year-round weather. Maastricht leads by 3 points.3
MaastrichtRotterdam
Score5956
Monthly daytime high5.7 °C to 23.8 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall41 mm to 84 mm42 mm to 85 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Maastricht runs the warmer year, with daytime highs of 6-24°C against 6-22°C, and it sits in greener surroundings: 19% of the land around it is protected against 10% around Rotterdam.

Rotterdam is the bigger city: about three times as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens, about twice as many museums, twice as many places to drink and three times as many nightclubs. There are 22 beaches nearby against Maastricht's 6, and twice as much park space near the centre.

Where they are alike

The weather is close to identical. Both run daytime highs of about 6-24°C across the year and about 1700 hours of sunshine, and neither has a month at 40mm of rain or less, so rain gear is needed in any season.

Both also sit within day-trip reach of 5 UNESCO-listed places, and both have museums to fill a wet afternoon and parks and open country to reach on a day out.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone who plans days around eating and going out should take Rotterdam: about three times as many restaurants near the centre, a wider spread of kitchens, and roughly three times as many nightclubs.

Families are better served in Rotterdam too, with about twice as many attractions and park space near the centre and 8 theme parks within reach against 5, plus 22 beaches for a day by the water.

Walkers and anyone who prefers open country close by will do better in Maastricht: 19% of the surrounding land is protected, nearly double Rotterdam's share, and its summers are a touch warmer, at 24°C in July.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figure is a national price level, identical for both by construction, so it tells you nothing about which city costs more. The €181 daily budget beside it is one national estimate rather than a measurement of either place, so treat neither as cheaper or better value.

Rotterdam's beach lead is about access rather than swimming: the sea peaks at 19°C and never reaches 21°C, so the water is cold by most standards. The months that rate best in both cities are also among the wettest, with summer rain above 80mm, so a warm trip is not a dry one.

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
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Maastricht
No coastline within reach
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Maastricht
64
58
55
41
58
69
73
84
58
65
62
74
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Maastricht
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Maastricht
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
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. Maastricht: 1991-2020 normals, Maastricht Airport Zuid Limburg (10 km from centre). Rotterdam: 1993-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Rotterdam Airport Zestienhoven (3.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Maastricht is the better summer pick, with highs of 24°C in July and August, and it holds an edge into autumn, when it gets 58-65mm of rain a month against Rotterdam's 78-81mm.

Rotterdam's warm window is narrower, 22°C at its peak, with the sea reaching 19°C in late summer, which is also its wettest stretch at around 84mm. Its late autumn and winter stay wet, so an off-season trip is drier in Maastricht.

Getting there

Flying fromMaastrichtRotterdam
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
DublinDUB
1 h 40 m
no fares
EIN · 70 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 85 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 35 m
€117-136
1 stop
BRU · 85 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 20 m
no fares
CRL · 97 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 10 m
no fares
EIN · 70 km
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 5 km
CuracaoCUR
10 h 0 m
no fares
DUS · 90 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 85 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

MeasureMaastrichtRotterdam
Official languageDutchDutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911112 or 911
Elevation49 m10 m
Main airportMaastricht Aachen Airport (MST)9 km from centre5 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMaastrichtRotterdam
City population120,227664,311
People per km²2,0002,080
Museums within 10 km2140
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km55
Distinct cuisines in the centre3377
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 Maastricht 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). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.