VacationSelector

Madrid or Rotterdam?

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

Your match

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration with your weighting.

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

MadridRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 37 points.37
MadridRotterdam
Score037
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km422
Coast distance305 km24 km
Water distance—24 km
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 11 points.11
MadridRotterdam
Score8372
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,508862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2846
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 15 points.15
MadridRotterdam
Score7560
Museums within 10 km9741
Museums within 2 km of centre5920
Share of museums within 2 km %6149
Unesco sites within 50 km45
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 32 points.32
MadridRotterdam
Score8149
Drinking venues within 4 km2,414542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6270
Nightclubs within 4 km34140
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 21 points.21
MadridRotterdam
Score6342
Protected land share 50 km %1910
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10079
Park area within 2 km187 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 15 points.15
MadridRotterdam
Score7762
Tourist attractions within 2 km6127
Park area within 2 km187 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km38
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 24 points.24
MadridRotterdam
Score7551
Notable places within 2 km28874
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 13 points.13
MadridRotterdam
Score7158
Price level global60.879.2
Daily budget€122€181
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 16 points.16
MadridRotterdam
Score7256
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm42 mm to 85 mm
Dry months70
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
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Madrid
No coastline within reach
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
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. Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 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 fromMadridRotterdam
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
DublinDUB
2 h 25 m
€111-148
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
CopenhagenCPH
3 h 5 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 20 m
€356-444
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 20 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
3 h 45 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 5 km
BogotaBOG
10 h 5 m
€963-1395
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
11 h 5 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
12 h 45 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
11 h 10 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

MeasureMadridRotterdam
Official languageSpanishDutch
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 number112112 or 911
Elevation663 m10 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridRotterdam
City population3,506,730664,311
People per km²5,8012,080
Museums within 10 km8840
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km45
Distinct cuisines in the centre10677
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 Madrid 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.