VacationSelector

Mexico City or Rotterdam?

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

Your match

Mexico City
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on year-round weather and nightlife with your weighting.

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families 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.

Mexico CityRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 37 points.37
Mexico CityRotterdam
Score037
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km422
Coast distance247 km24 km
Water distance—24 km
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 6 points.6
Mexico CityRotterdam
Score6672
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,179862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1546
Museums & heritage. Mexico City leads by 19 points.19
Mexico CityRotterdam
Score7960
Museums within 10 km13841
Museums within 2 km of centre6520
Share of museums within 2 km %4749
Unesco sites within 50 km65
Nightlife. Mexico City leads by 29 points.29
Mexico CityRotterdam
Score7849
Drinking venues within 4 km2,156542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre926378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4370
Nightclubs within 4 km19840
Nature & day trips. Mexico City leads by 21 points.21
Mexico CityRotterdam
Score6342
Protected land share 50 km %3010
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10079
Park area within 2 km32 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 12 points.12
Mexico CityRotterdam
Score5062
Tourist attractions within 2 km2327
Park area within 2 km32 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km48
Sights concentration. Mexico City leads by 3 points.3
Mexico CityRotterdam
Score5451
Notable places within 2 km8874
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Mexico City leads by 18 points.18
Mexico CityRotterdam
Score7658
Price level global54.279.2
Daily budget—€181
Year-round weather. Mexico City leads by 34 points.34
Mexico CityRotterdam
Score9056
Monthly daytime high22.2 °C to 27.9 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 186 mm42 mm to 85 mm
Dry months60
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
Mexico City
22
25
26
28
27
26
25
25
24
23
23
22
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Mexico City
No coastline within reach
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Mexico City
7
3
19
27
53
127
176
186
144
79
10
9
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Mexico City
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Mexico City
8
8
9
8
8
6
6
6
5
6
7
7
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. Mexico City: 1991-2020 normals, Mexico Central, D. F. (7.9 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 fromMexico CityRotterdam
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
4 h 40 m
€335-379
MEX · 7 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
11 h 20 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 30 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
17 h 30 m
€1,075-1211
2 stops
MEX · 7 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
CancunCUN
2 h 10 m
€123-162
MEX · 7 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
3 h 35 m
€248-282
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
3 h 50 m
€259-271
MEX · 7 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
BogotaBOG
4 h 25 m
no fares
MEX · 7 km
11 h 5 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
2 h 25 m
€203-306
1 stop
MEX · 7 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
15 h 20 m
€1,089-1205
3 stops
MEX · 7 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

MeasureMexico CityRotterdam
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec MayaDutch
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112 or 911
Elevation2,240 m10 m
Main airportMexico City Benito Juárez International Airport (MEX)7 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMexico CityRotterdam
City population9,209,944664,311
People per km²6,2022,080
Museums within 10 km10840
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km65
Distinct cuisines in the centre5077
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 Mexico City 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). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.