VacationSelector

Oslo or Rotterdam?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Oslo
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on good for families 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.

OsloRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Oslo leads by 23 points.23
OsloRotterdam
Score6037
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km16322
Coast distance1 km24 km
Water distance1 km24 km
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 5 points.5
OsloRotterdam
Score6772
Restaurants within 2 km of centre853862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3446
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 12 points.12
OsloRotterdam
Score4860
Museums within 10 km7041
Museums within 2 km of centre3720
Share of museums within 2 km %5349
Unesco sites within 50 km05
Nightlife. Oslo leads by 4 points.4
OsloRotterdam
Score5349
Drinking venues within 4 km695542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre562378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8170
Nightclubs within 4 km4140
Nature & day trips. Oslo leads by 19 points.19
OsloRotterdam
Score6142
Protected land share 50 km %2210
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %9479
Park area within 2 km88 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 14 points.14
OsloRotterdam
Score4862
Tourist attractions within 2 km1327
Park area within 2 km88 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km28
Sights concentration. Oslo leads by 18 points.18
OsloRotterdam
Score6951
Notable places within 2 km20774
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rotterdam leads by 4 points.4
OsloRotterdam
Score5458
Price level global85.179.2
Daily budget€203€181
Year-round weather. Rotterdam leads by 8 points.8
OsloRotterdam
Score4856
Monthly daytime high0.1 °C to 22.7 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall40 mm to 104 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
Oslo
0
1
5
11
17
20
23
21
16
10
4
1
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Oslo
4
3
3
6
11
15
18
18
15
12
9
6
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Oslo
58
46
40
48
60
80
86
104
81
94
84
54
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Oslo
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Oslo
2
3
5
6
8
8
8
7
5
3
2
1
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. Oslo: 1991-2020 normals, Oslo-Blindern (4.3 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 fromOsloRotterdam
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 15 m
€92-109
OSL · 37 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
1 h 5 m
€83-98
OSL · 37 km
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 15 m
€145-204
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
3 h 30 m
€110-169
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
DublinDUB
2 h 10 m
no fares
OSL · 37 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 0 m
no fares
OSL · 37 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 5 m
€46-96
OSL · 37 km
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 5 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€406
OSL · 37 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 40 m
no fares
OSL · 37 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
10 h 50 m
no fares
OSL · 37 km
11 h 30 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

MeasureOsloRotterdam
Official languageNorwegian, Nynorsk, Bokmål, SámiDutch
CurrencyNorwegian Krone (NOK)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 112, ambulance 113, fire 110112 or 911
Elevation23 m10 m
Main airportOslo-Gardermoen International Airport (OSL)37 km from centre58 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureOsloRotterdam
City population717,710664,311
People per km²–2,080
Museums within 10 km6040
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km05
Distinct cuisines in the centre7577
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Oslo 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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. 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.