VacationSelector

Montreal or Rotterdam?

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

Your match

Montreal
47
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration with your weighting.

Rotterdam
✓ Best match
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage 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.

MontrealRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 37 points.37
MontrealRotterdam
Score037
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km722
Coast distance276 km24 km
Water distance24 km
Places to eat. Montreal leads by 2 points.2
MontrealRotterdam
Score7472
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,016862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4946
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 23 points.23
MontrealRotterdam
Score3760
Museums within 10 km3941
Museums within 2 km of centre1920
Share of museums within 2 km %4949
Unesco sites within 50 km05
Nightlife. Montreal leads by 13 points.13
MontrealRotterdam
Score6249
Drinking venues within 4 km1,012542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre493378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4970
Nightclubs within 4 km7440
Nature & day trips. Rotterdam leads by 6 points.6
MontrealRotterdam
Score3642
Protected land share 50 km %210
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10079
Park area within 2 km189 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 12 points.12
MontrealRotterdam
Score5062
Tourist attractions within 2 km1127
Park area within 2 km189 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km18
Sights concentration. Montreal leads by 5 points.5
MontrealRotterdam
Score5651
Notable places within 2 km9874
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rotterdam leads by 4 points.4
MontrealRotterdam
Score5458
Price level global8479.2
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. Rotterdam leads by 6 points.6
MontrealRotterdam
Score5056
Monthly daytime high-3.5 °C to 26.5 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall69 mm to 121 mm42 mm to 85 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
Montreal
-3
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
13
6
-1
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Montreal
No coastline within reach
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Montreal
84
69
89
121
89
107
98
109
88
100
85
94
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Montreal
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Montreal
3
4
6
6
8
8
9
8
7
4
3
3
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. Montreal: 1991-2020 normals, Montreal McTavish (3.2 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 fromMontrealRotterdam
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 20 m
€231-372
1 stop
YUL · 16 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 10 m
€308-372
YUL · 16 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
7 h 10 m
no fares
YUL · 16 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
DublinDUB
6 h 15 m
no fares
YUL · 16 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
CopenhagenCPH
7 h 30 m
no fares
YUL · 16 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
13 h 10 m
no fares
YUL · 16 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
CuracaoCUR
5 h 5 m
no fares
YUL · 16 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 15 m
€133-276
YUL · 16 km
7 h 45 m
€458-478
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 5 m
no fares
YUL · 16 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
SeoulICN, GMP
13 h 5 m
no fares
YUL · 16 km
10 h 45 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

MeasureMontrealRotterdam
Official languageFrench, EnglishDutch
CurrencyCanadian Dollar (CAD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112 or 911
Elevation31 m10 m
Main airportMontreal / Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (YUL)16 km from centre164 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMontrealRotterdam
City population1,895,211664,311
People per km²3,8062,080
Museums within 10 km3740
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km05
Distinct cuisines in the centre9777
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Montreal 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.