VacationSelector

New York or Rotterdam?

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

Your match

New York
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on value for money and nature & day trips 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.

New YorkRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. New York leads by 27 points.27
New YorkRotterdam
Score6437
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km1722
Coast distance1 km24 km
Water distance1 km24 km
Places to eat. New York leads by 23 points.23
New YorkRotterdam
Score9572
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6,032862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3846
Museums & heritage. New York and Rotterdam are level on 60.
New YorkRotterdam
Score6060
Museums within 10 km11941
Museums within 2 km of centre3120
Share of museums within 2 km %2649
Unesco sites within 50 km25
Nightlife. New York leads by 40 points.40
New YorkRotterdam
Score8949
Drinking venues within 4 km4,159542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,015378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4870
Nightclubs within 4 km19240
Nature & day trips. Rotterdam leads by 3 points.3
New YorkRotterdam
Score3942
Protected land share 50 km %410
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6979
Park area within 2 km134 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. New York leads by 10 points.10
New YorkRotterdam
Score7262
Tourist attractions within 2 km3727
Park area within 2 km134 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km78
Sights concentration. New York leads by 23 points.23
New YorkRotterdam
Score7451
Notable places within 2 km26874
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rotterdam leads by 15 points.15
New YorkRotterdam
Score4358
Price level global10079.2
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. New York leads by 2 points.2
New YorkRotterdam
Score5856
Monthly daytime high4.5 °C to 30.1 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall74 mm to 112 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
New York
5
6
10
16
22
27
30
29
25
19
13
7
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
New York
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
New York
No sunshine record
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. New York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 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 fromNew YorkRotterdam
DublinDUB
6 h 40 m
€391-493
JFK · 21 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
7 h 25 m
€474-553
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 30 m
€445-517
JFK · 21 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
CopenhagenCPH
7 h 55 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ManchesterMAN
7 h 0 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
13 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
8 h 5 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
CuracaoCUR
4 h 25 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 5 m
€236-237
LGA · 13 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
TokyoHND, NRT
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 21 km
11 h 40 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 2026-09 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

MeasureNew YorkRotterdam
Official languageDutch
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)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
Elevation25 m10 m
Main airportJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureNew YorkRotterdam
City population8,804,190664,311
People per km²7,2562,080
Museums within 10 km15740
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km25
Distinct cuisines in the centre13277
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow New York 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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. 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.