VacationSelector

Maastricht or The Hague?

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.

The Hague
✓ Best match
57
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 you want a smaller city that runs warmer in summer, up to 24°C, with its attractions inside a short walk and protected countryside close by.

Choose The Hague if you want the coast, with the sea at 19°C in August, a much wider choice of restaurants and more to see on foot from the centre.

Scoreboard

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

MaastrichtThe Hague
Beaches & swimming. The Hague leads by 60 points.60
MaastrichtThe Hague
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km634
Coast distance118 km3 km
Water distance—3 km
Places to eat. The Hague leads by 22 points.22
MaastrichtThe Hague
Score4870
Restaurants within 2 km of centre338798
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2243
Museums & heritage. The Hague leads by 9 points.9
MaastrichtThe Hague
Score5362
Museums within 10 km2346
Museums within 2 km of centre1326
Share of museums within 2 km %5757
Unesco sites within 50 km54
Nightlife. The Hague leads by 16 points.16
MaastrichtThe Hague
Score3046
Drinking venues within 4 km223511
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre182288
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8256
Nightclubs within 4 km1319
Nature & day trips. The Hague leads by 17 points.17
MaastrichtThe Hague
Score3754
Protected land share 50 km %198
Landscape blanket share 50 km %110
Land share of disc %10056
Park area within 2 km33 hectares159 hectares
Good for families. The Hague leads by 10 points.10
MaastrichtThe Hague
Score4656
Tourist attractions within 2 km1510
Park area within 2 km33 hectares159 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km57
Sights concentration. The Hague leads by 18 points.18
MaastrichtThe Hague
Score3654
Notable places within 2 km3286
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Maastricht and The Hague are level on 58.
MaastrichtThe Hague
Score5858
Price level global79.279.2
Daily budget€181€181
Year-round weather. Maastricht leads by 5 points.5
MaastrichtThe Hague
Score5954
Monthly daytime high5.7 °C to 23.8 °C6.1 °C to 21.3 °C
Monthly rainfall41 mm to 84 mm42 mm to 85 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Maastricht runs warmer, 6-24°C across the year against 6-21°C, and has open country nearer: 19% of the surrounding land is protected against 8%. It also has about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre, and 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 4.

The Hague has the coast, with 34 beaches nearby against Maastricht's 6, about twice as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens, and roughly three times as many notable places within walking distance.

Where they are alike

Weather is where they are most alike: both bottom out at 6°C in January, both see close to 1700 hours of sunshine a year, and neither has a month at 40mm of rain or less.

Both also carry museums and UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, 5 from Maastricht and 4 from The Hague, and both work with children, with theme parks in reach either way, attractions clustered in Maastricht and park space in The Hague.

Which traveller are you?

If the sea is the point, The Hague is the only option of the two: 34 beaches nearby and water at 19°C in August, warm enough to get in but not for long. Maastricht has no coast.

Eating and drinking through a city also favours The Hague, with about twice as many restaurants and about twice as many places to drink near the centre, though its bars are more spread out than Maastricht's.

Walkers and day-trippers should look at Maastricht: 19% of the land around it is protected, 5 UNESCO-listed places sit within reach, and summer highs of 24°C beat the coast's.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value comparison between these two carries no information. The figure behind it is a national price level, identical for both by construction, so nothing here says one city is cheaper than the other. The €181 a day quoted is a single national estimate, not a measurement of either place.

The coast reads better than it swims: the sea peaks at 19°C in August and never reaches 21°C, so the swimming window is short. The warmest months are also among the wettest in both cities, with August above 80mm, so warm does not mean dry.

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
The Hague
6
7
9
13
16
19
21
21
18
14
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Maastricht
No coastline within reach
The Hague
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
The Hague
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
The Hague
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
The Hague
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). The Hague: 1991-2020 normals, Valkenburg (13.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Maastricht is the better bet in high summer, with highs of 22-24°C from June to August and July its warmest. April is the driest month either city gets, 41mm here, and already at 15°C.

The Hague peaks in August at 21°C, with the sea at 19°C then and still 18°C in September. Autumn separates them: The Hague takes 78-81mm across September and October against Maastricht's 58-65mm, so late-season trips stay drier inland.

Getting there

Flying fromMaastrichtThe Hague
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 40 km
DublinDUB
1 h 40 m
no fares
EIN · 70 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 40 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 85 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 40 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 35 m
€117-136
1 stop
BRU · 85 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 40 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 40 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 20 m
no fares
CRL · 97 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 40 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 40 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 10 m
no fares
EIN · 70 km
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 16 km
CuracaoCUR
10 h 0 m
no fares
DUS · 90 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 40 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 85 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 40 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

MeasureMaastrichtThe Hague
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 m1 m
Main airportMaastricht Aachen Airport (MST)9 km from centre5 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)16 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMaastrichtThe Hague
City population120,227548,320
People per km²2,0005,589
Museums within 10 km2154
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km54
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 The Hague 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.